


Fiat

by vanitashaze



Series: Alabanza [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Agender Character, Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Gender/Sexuality, BDSM, Better Living and Psychological Healing Through Kinky Polyamory, Canon Disabled Character, Collars, Come for the Kinky Smut Stay for the Politics, Consent Issues, D/s, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Issues, Future Fic, Gender Issues, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, Other, Oviposition, Parenthood, Politics, Polyamory, Royalty Roleplay, The Tags Make This Fic Sound Like It Has a Very Different Plot Than It Does, To Be Clear This is Not Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 11:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16681060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitashaze/pseuds/vanitashaze
Summary: "This should have been gold," Allura murmurs as she fastens the collar around Shiro's throat. "Solid gold, warm to the touch. That's what you would have had, had you been my imperial consort."Shiro and Allura both want things that they're not supposed to want. Shiro, surprisingly, is the one who's okay with that.





	Fiat

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Alabanza canon AU ‘verse, which diverges from canon sometime in the middle of S4. However, this can be read as a standalone with some context — namely, that Shiro and Allura have been together for a long time, have a young son (Alric), and are non-monogamous and polyamorous, with Shiro in a newer but committed relationship with Matt as well; Shiro is on the agender end of not-cisgender; and Lance and Keith have two daughters themselves, Xiomara and Meyzak (“Maze”). Also, reminder that varga = hour and dobash = minute. Everything else can probably be picked up along the way, although I still recommend reading the other Alabanza fics, particularly the How the Dead Live sub-series, because… well, I wrote them, but also because certain references in this fic will be more resonant that way.
> 
> As always, content warnings in the end notes.

It’s autumn in the mountain passes on Shon Mir, and war snaps at the heels of war. It’s been a mere fifteen years since the galaxy rose up to throw off its chains and declare a new age of peace and fellowship, and the Alliance has already begun to eat itself alive, uneasy allies looking towards each others’ quintessence and plutonium, the oppressed rising up against the oppressors and the oppressors rising up against the oppressed, not even waiting for the war with Lotor to end before rushing forward into the next.

 

They’re so eager to die and kill, all these allies, Allura thinks as she sits through yet another contentious small council meeting, listening to the representatives talk at each other even as they know that the real decisions will be made in smaller, private meetings. Perhaps she's being uncharitable, though. After all, the allied planets are comprised of many people who do not all necessarily want to be allied to whomever their leaders choose that they will be, and those people are not really eager to die and kill, they’re eager to die and kill _for._  And then, as always, there’s Voltron in the middle of it all, trying to stop anyone from killing anyone else for something, even if they’re killing for peace.

 

“We have to go back to negotiations with them,” Shiro is saying tiredly. “If we can get them to come to the table and stay there until the winter, the bulk of their forces won’t be able to get to each other for at least a few months. It’ll buy us more time to come to a peaceful solution between the Shon Min and the Preetaptzi.”

 

“Surely you can’t expect us to side with anyone funded by Lotor,” Ambassador Aoem points out. “You haven’t outright said it, but our intelligence forces have confirmed that he's the one arming the Preet. He’s hoping to overthrow the legitimate government of Shon Mir so his new allies can turn over the wealth of the planet to him, and you want to help them?”

 

“The Preetapzi are not the Preet,” Allura reminds the small council. “The Preetapzi are a group within the Preet population. They do not represent all of their people, merely a certain political subset, and their support on the ground among the Preet has never been very high and certainly isn’t now — as your intelligence should have reported. For us to conflate the two is exactly what certain extremist elements among the Shon Min want.”

 

“But the Preetapzi are being funded by Lotor, you can’t deny that,” Ambassador Aoem says.

 

“Yes, they took aid from Lotor, and that’s exactly why we should help them,” Shiro says, and no one but Allura could hear the frustration in his tone. “They have legitimate grievances that aren’t being addressed, and they accepted aid from Lotor because he was the only one who would listen, because we were too focused on propping up the Shon Min government so they wouldn’t cut off our supply of refined quintessence.”

 

“So what would you have us do?” Secretary Mesiba asks. A considering tone, Allura notes. Good.

 

“Recognize the Preetapzi as a legitimate political entity,” Shiro says promptly, and quickly holds up his hands as the room nearly erupts into yelling. “Bring them to the table as equals and actually address their grievances. It’s just going to get worse if we don’t act now.”

 

“And how would you propose we ‘act’?” Ambassador Aoem asks sourly. “Shon Mir is hardly a small backwater planet. You’re talking about interfering in the affairs of one of the most powerful planets in the N1 quadrant if not the entire Alliance.”

 

“They have the refineries, but they don’t have a big enough supply of raw quintessence without the Mnenmus’s population of Balmeras,” Shiro says, nodding to Secretary Mesiba, who nods back. Even better. “Thanks to us working together, the Mnenmus doesn’t need the level of refined quintessence that it did when it was rebuilding from Lotor’s attack, especially since it’s been concentrating on building up its refineries. The rest of the Alliance can sustain itself on the quintessence the Mnenmus can refine domestically — long enough that economic sanctions against Shon Mir could work.”

 

“You want to jeopardize the entire war effort against Lotor to help some backwards farmers,” Colonel Moon snaps.

 

“Losing Shon Mir’s quintessence refineries entirely when they’re destroyed in a civil war is hardly preferable to losing them temporarily to prevent one,” Allura points out, since appealing to Colonel Moon’s sense of compassion and decency instead is such a lost cause that it’s likely located in another galaxy. “Yes, I think that helping some backwoods farmers — who, by the way, in many areas of the planet outnumber the Shon Min population —”

 

“They’re all Shon Min, it’s Shon Mir,” Ambassador Aoem mutters.

 

“— is in our best interests,” Allura finishes. “We’ll bleed a little now so we’re not gutted later. We must act with foresight. Didn’t we learn that in the Mnenmus?”

 

Secretary Mesiba nods, looking suddenly very far away. She lost her husband and her eldest daughter in Lotor’s devastating surprise attack two years ago, Allura remembers. She has memorial tattoos on her arm, customary for Mnenmites, and underneath the sacred names of her family she has two additional words, “mesmena utu”: _never again._

 

“We didn’t fight Zarkon so that we would be free to fight each other,” Shiro reminds the council. “We fought Zarkon to live in peace — a lasting peace. We fought so our children could grow up never knowing fear or hunger or war or injustice, and I believe that we can make that galaxy. We’re not bound by what our ancestors did — if we had acted like the galaxy would always be the way it was, we would have never gotten our freedom from him. We defeated Zarkon and we’re defeating Lotor because were all able to dream up a better galaxy than the one we had. Let’s keep dreaming.”

 

Most of the representatives nod, or pulse, or smile, or acknowledge his points in their people’s fashion, although his speech earns him a few subtle frowns and one outright scowl from Colonel Moon. Without even prompting, Allura’s personal secretary Taz subtly writes down the list of the frowners — those are the warmongers that Allura will need to privately deal with even as Shiro privately bolsters the support and confidence of the peacekeepers.

 

Not that Allura doesn’t largely agree with the warmongers, actually, although for vastly different reasons than most of them. She and Shiro both have little interest in keeping an unjust peace, but winter on Shon Mir is brutal enough without armies blasting their way through the fall harvests. Should it come to war now, the majority of casualties will be civilians falling to starvation and disease, not soldiers falling in battle — Preet dying for the Preetapzi leaders who claim to speak for them all even as Allura’s spies report that the Preetapzi only has the support of _maybe_  a fifth of the millions of Preet they’re throwing into the firing line of progress. Even if the Preetapzi truly did speak for all of their people, Voltron doesn’t have the political support among their allies to intervene militarily — and so Shiro speaks of peace and Allura quietly reminds them of the consequences of war and they both push for sanctions and talks and wait for spring.

 

It’s a division that suits them, the dual voices of reason and optimism, the left hand and the right. Talking about defeating one’s oppressors is a little ridiculous coming from a Princess, even her, but there is perhaps no one as widely respected in the galaxy by the powerful and powerless alike as Takashi Shirogane, Black Paladin of Voltron: the Galra’s former slave super-weapon, not even a person but a _thing,_  a possession, who broke his chains and then rose up to break the chains of others as a free man.

 

It helps that he’s as much of an oddity as she is, only a handful of his species scattered throughout the galaxy with no history good or ill with any other peoples, forever an exile from the planet lost through a vanished dimensional portal. It seems that half the galaxy these days is comprised of refugees, and they look at the Black Paladin and see hope after their loss, a home lost but a new one found.

 

The Kerberos mission didn’t actually fall through a one-time dimensional portal, of course, but that’s Voltron’s story and they’re sticking to it. It wouldn’t do for planets grown wealthy and tough on the war with the Galra to look towards Earth and wonder how easy it was to conquer, especially since the answer is “very”.

 

Interior Secretary Fada Mure stands up and bows to the room. What an odious little man, Allura thinks. “You’ve given us much to think about, Black Paladin. I propose that we retire for midday meal — a short break, just two vargas — and then come back to discuss how we might keep the peace on Shon Mir.”

 

“I won’t be able to join you later,” Shiro reminds the council. “I have another meeting.”

 

“A shame, but Princess Allura will be here to speak for Voltron,” Fada Mure says smoothly. “We’ll miss your wisdom, of course, but you’ve given us much to consider.”

 

Taz quietly marks Fada Mure down on Allura’s meeting list.

 

“Two vargas, no more,” Secretary Mesiba says firmly. A ridiculous length of time, but it’s the minimum length it takes for a Hohone like Mure to digest, and Allura certainly won’t complain about getting some time to herself.

 

Allura nods regally and turns to Shiro beside her.

 

“Do you have time to take your lunch break with me?” Allura asks him.

 

Shiro looks at his personal secretary Xin Tu seated on his other side, who nods, and Shiro turns back to Allura and nods wryly as well. “Apparently so.”

 

“Excellent,” Allura says, falling into step next to him as they walk off towards the elevator that will take them to personal quarters of Voltron, located far from the newly refurbished diplomatic wing of the Castle. They fall into a practiced stride, easy enough that they don’t appear anxious, but quick enough that all but the most desperate petitioners would let them pass unmolested, and as they walk, they discuss light topics — the coming Green Festival on Olkarion, the commendable parts of the six-varga-long opera in the Ancient Altean style that they were strongly encouraged to attend, the interesting new asteroid mining technology being developed in the N4 quadrant.

 

Throughout their walk, Allura finds herself watching Shiro appreciatively. Never more than appropriate for a couple who have been partners for as long as they have, settled and domestic with a child who’s a beloved symbol of new life throughout the galaxy and who is mostly likely throwing a fit right now or adding his artistic contributions to the walls of Voltron’s personal quarters — simply subtle appreciation for Shiro’s beauty, a warm smile at finally being able to spend some time with her beloved partner that doesn’t require the presence of their secretaries.

 

Shiro is graceful even in something as mundane as getting into an elevator, his movements powerful and his stride long and even, and he opens the door to their apartments but waits for her to go through first. So dependable, her partner, so patient and gracious, the model of character taught to schoolchildren across the galaxy.

 

The minute the doors close behind them, Shiro collapses on the bed, arm thrown dramatically over his eyes. “I thought that council meeting would never end.”

 

“It hasn’t ended, it’s just broken for lunch,” Allura reminds him, sighing as she bends down to unbuckle her boots. “Although it might have well have ended — we’ll get nothing done there, not with Moon and Mure there to sway the undecideds like Aoem. Instead of actually working towards helping the Preet, I’ll have to listen to those two waste everyone’s time.”

 

“You should talk to —” Shiro starts.

 

“Mesiba, yes,” Allura says. “Taz is already scheduling a private meeting with her. She'll want some kind of favorable trade deal, but I'm sure we can work something out.”

 

“You just have to get through five vargas with Moon and Mure first,” Shiro says, sitting up so he can grin at her like, as Pidge would say, a little shit.

 

“And the timing of your afternoon meeting is not at _all_ suspicious,” Allura says.

 

“Hey, the private meeting with the Preetapzi delegation is important. It’s just a coincidence that I get to skip Mure,” Shiro says.

 

“I never thought one could loathe one’s partner so much,” Allura says, mock-seriously, and Shiro just grins wider, leaning back on his elbows. It’s taken so many years for him to believe that she loves him — for him to believe that anyone could love him, imperfect as he was — and even five years ago Allura would never have made this joke for fear that he would think that she meant it, but parenthood has been good for Shiro. She still sometimes wakes up to him hiding in the bathroom and staring down at his plasma-option arm and clearly thinking about turning it on himself, but it’s become less frequent as Shiro came to realize that it doesn’t really matter whether his son likes him, because Alric _needs_ him, and better to perhaps err and err than leave Alric with the mistaken knowledge that he was the thing that drove his papa to kill himself.

 

Speaking of which. “Remind me of Alric’s schedule today, darling?”

 

“Lance, basically,” Shiro says. “He’s taking time off so he can be there with Maze during her recovery period, take care of her, and Alric is hanging out with them. Probably drawing. She’s really into art education for all right now.”

 

“Yes, I’ve seen the evidence of that on the walls of the Window Room,” Allura says. “I suppose it’s a bad habit, but I don’t feel particularly inclined towards stopping him. The walls here are very dreary, and it’s easier to turn him loose upon them than to go to the trouble of commissioning professional murals. He won’t be joining us for afternoon naptime?”

 

“No, that’s later, we have probably a varga to ourselves first,” Shiro says, and Allura grins wide. They’ve barely seen each other for a week, trading nights with Alric and always waking up alone — she’s seen Shiro more this month on the opposite side of a conference table than the opposite side of the bed, and that makes it all the sweeter to set her circlet on the nightstand and hike up the skirt of her gown and sit astride his lap and kiss him, cupping his cheek with one hand and grabbing his arse with the other.

 

“So is that what you want to do with our free varga?” Shiro asks dryly.

 

“Well, at first I thought we could lay in bed and read reports to each other, but I’m trying to be considerate of your needs,” Allura says, and Shiro laughs against her mouth.

 

“Why not,” Shiro says. “We could use a break from all this,” already reaching around to start blindly unfastening her gown with the ease of many years of delicious practice. She stands up so she can wiggle out of it, dumping the entire thing on a chair even as the memory of her old maidservant shrieks at her over its mistreatment, and comes back to him naked and joyfully hungry. It takes a lot of wonderful rolling about on their bed for them to divest him of his clothing as well, but by the time they finally succeed in pulling off the final sock, he’s got the beginnings of a magnificent bite-bruise low on his neck and she’s nearly twitching in impatience for him to touch her genitals, since Shiro is magnificently committed to both lavishing attention on every other part of her that feels pleasure and being a terrible tease, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes very intentionally indeed.

 

“You are a horrid tease,” Allura informs him.

 

“I’m just being thorough,” Shiro says innocently.

 

“Well, you may consider me thoroughly teased. Any particular requests?” Allura asks, enjoying his shudders when she rubs at his nipple with a spit-wet finger.

 

“Very particular request,” Shiro says breathlessly. “Fuck me.”

 

“Oh, if you insist,” Allura says archly, but then ruins her regal air trying to kiss him and fumble around in their nightstand for the lubricant at the same time, her arm gone long and spindly to reach, until she gives up, swearing and clambering over him to fetch the correct small tube rather than every vaguely tube-shaped thing she could blindly grope for. Innovative though she and Shiro may be, she doubts attempting to use lipstick as lubricant would entirely work.

 

“This would be so much easier if you were already ready when you came to bed,” Allura mutters, popping open the cap and promptly managing to squirt some of the lubricant all over her leg.

 

“What, put it in my morning routine?” Shiro asks dryly. “Wake up, brush teeth, get dressed, butt plug, breakfast?”

 

“Yes, that sounds like an absolutely marvelous idea, we should do that,” Allura says, gloving up. “On your side, I think.”

 

“I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with the secret-public thing,” Shiro says, rolling onto his side and bringing his legs up, but underneath the reflexive horror at possibly being impolite to someone — telepaths, perhaps — his tone says that under the right circumstances he might be very interested indeed.

 

“Really?” Allura says as she works her fingers inside him. “You wouldn’t want to be reminded of me and my plans for you at the smallest movement? Wouldn’t want to feel me inside you even when I’m halfway across the city?”

 

Shiro’s breath stutters, and she grins in triumph.

 

“You’re a terrible liar, darling,” Allura says cheerfully, gently scissoring her fingers. “But a wonderful bedmate, so I’ll forgive you.”

 

Shiro mutters something against the sheets that might be, “ _You’re_ a terrible liar,” which is objectively not true, so she lets his mutterings pass. He’s always terribly enjoyable like this, beautiful and biddable even when he’s feeling witty, and she simultaneously wants to lick him everywhere and finger him for the entire varga and let her ovipositor emerge from its protective cavity and put it in him right quiznacking now, so she compromises with herself, snapping off the glove and pulling him up so she can lick at the sensitive spot behind his left ear. If she had more time she’d lick him at his opening too, that can be enjoyable, but he had a very specific request and she has a firm desire to deliver it.

 

“On your hands and knees, I think,” Allura says, and he goes, but then almost immediately sits back on his heels.

 

“Wait, I —” Shiro starts, and she pulls back.

 

“Are you alright, darling?” Allura asks. “Is your shoulder hurting? I can take you on your back if you’d prefer.”

 

“No, it’s fine, I’m okay, but —” He struggles for a moment before disentangling himself from her embrace and getting up to pad over to her wardrobe. It’s been a long, hard day for him, and she has a suspicion of what he’s going to fetch — a suspicion confirmed when he collects the small blue jewelry case from the top shelf above the neat line of gowns and bodysuits in pearlescent Imperial white and the far more colorful, far less expensive collection of clothing that she wears on their outings to visit Matt in Quuduzh.

 

“Can we…” Shiro starts, but his voice trails off and he mutely offers her the blue case. For all the shame that he’s managed to shed in his time with her, he’s never been able to shake the shame of asking for this. The galaxy's symbol of freedom, asking to be anything but.

 

“Yes, of course, darling,” Allura says, and moves around so that he can sit between her legs, his back to her chest and his chin held high so that she can take the collar from the jewelry case and gently fasten it around his throat.

 

It’s a simple thing by Imperial standards, nothing close to the opulent torcs that graced her mother’s neck or the necks of her grandmother’s seven spouses. There are no carvings, no jewels, barely any metal at all, just a smooth band of soft black leather, fastened by a small silver clasp in the shape of a closed fist holding the two ends shut. The leather and color had been Shiro’s request, even though a beauty such as he deserved far lovelier; the clasp had been her contribution.

 

Sometimes this is the prelude to more complex bed games, or chaste games of utter control. More often than not, he brings her the box and she claims him and then they simply continue their time as normal, discussing the events of the day or having sex or playing with Alric, although Shiro insists on covering the collar whenever anyone else is around, particularly Alric, which seems to her a strange affectation to have even among Team Voltron but she’s willing to let it pass. It’s not the custom of these people to possess their spouses, even benevolently, and for some reason, Shiro is ashamed that he wishes to be visibly treasured.

 

“This should have been gold,” Allura murmurs to herself, fastening the collar around Shiro’s throat.

 

“Gold leather?” Shiro asks, since he has ridiculously good hearing. “That’s not really my taste.”

 

She finishes fastening the clasp and runs her finger along the line of collar, light enough that she can feel him shiver at her touch. “Not leather. Solid gold, warm to the touch.” She smiles to herself. “That’s what you would have had, had you been my imperial consort.”

 

“What would it have looked like?” Shiro asks, curious. “Just a gold ring?”

 

“No,” Allura says. “Far lovelier.” She traces a line around the back of his neck. “A solid band here.” Touches the side of his neck. “But twisted here, with flourishes, and here,” and over his jugular and windpipe, “the Imperial lions.”

 

“As the clasp?” Shiro asks.

 

“No clasp,” Allura says, and tugs at the collar around his neck for emphasis. “It’s not designed to come off.”

 

“That seems impractical,” Shiro says, attempting a dry tone, but his breathing betrays him as he arranges himself before her, on his knees and elbows with his forehead almost pressed to the sheets.

 

“Not at all,” Allura says as she slicks her ovipositor and lines herself up behind him. “Why would you ever need to take it off?”

 

“To fight,” Shiro says, slightly muffled.

 

“You could fight in it,” Allura tells him, running her hands over his back and ribs and hips like armies sweeping across a map. “Many spouses did. My mother did.”

 

“…To be polite?” Shiro guesses.

 

Allura laughs lowly. “It’s not rude to tell the truth. You would be my consort.” She enters him in one slow, inescapable thrust, Shiro gasping at the sensation. “The whole galaxy would already know that you belong to me.”

 

“So I’d be your trophy spouse?” Shiro pants, pushing back against her, seeking even more of her touch even as she’s already inside him, and she shifts her entire body bigger, bending over him so that she can envelop him in the way that they both enjoy.

 

“Yes, you deserve many awards,” Allura says, groaning a little as she finds the rhythm that she likes.

 

“I meant — ah! — I meant that I wouldn’t have a job,” Shiro says. “Unless I’m still the Black Paladin in this hypothetical scenario?”

 

“If Altea never fell, I suppose Zarkon would still be the Black Paladin, as odd a thought as that is,” Allura says, and Shiro huffs out a laugh. “But you wouldn’t be idle. A consort has many duties.”

 

“Like what?” Shiro asks. “Meeting with annoying diplomats?”

 

“If I required you to, but first and foremost, to bring me pleasure,” Allura says, bouncing him a bit on her ovipositor for emphasis. “To wear my mark. Stand at my side. Sleep in my bed. Speak in my name. Fight for my honor. Protect my interests. Carry my children.”

 

Shiro huffs regretfully. “All of those, yes, but I don’t think the last one is possible.”

 

“Were you Altean, it would be,” Allura says, nudging his legs wider simply for the hot pleasure of seeing him spread out before her.

 

“I’m not,” Shiro pants, and even through the haze of his pleasure, she can taste a bitter note of sadness.

 

“But if you _were,_ ” Allura says, “as my consort, that would be your most important work, for I could trust no other with a task so precious. It would be your duty to incubate my eggs.” She hesitates, then leans closer, tugging on his collar so that he brings his head up and she can whisper in his ear. “It would be your pleasure.”

 

Shiro moans softly, and she grins, fierce and predatory.

 

“Would you like that, my love?” Allura asks slyly. “To feel a part of me alive within you? To be the envy of all of Court as they watched you grow heavy with my child?”

 

“Yes,” Shiro whispers.

 

“Of course, they’d already be envious of you,” Allura muses, moving slow and deep within him, her braids escaping their pins to fall and brush against his broad back as she fucks him. “You’re so beautiful like this; how could they not be? Perhaps they’d even have the privilege of watching me take you.”

 

She laughs. “They’d send ten thousand knives against you after they saw that, simply for envy, and you’d turn away every one. My strong, clever, beautiful consort. Highest in my heart and loveliest in my bed.”

 

“In front of them? What, a fertility ritual?” Shiro guesses, panting.

 

“No,” Allura says, although there were many of those, but they involved a lot of tediously long, intricately choreographed songs rather than public fucking. She smiles even though he can’t see it, pushing between his shoulderblades with the heel of his hand to force him lower and make the dip of his spine even lovelier. “I might simply wish to have you at a time and place where others were around.”

 

Shiro huffs out a laugh into the bedsheets. “I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with that either.”

 

“And what makes you think that your comfort would matter?” Allura asks.

 

She hears him take a sharp breath, and for a moment, she wonders if she’s gone too far, spoken too true — but his shudder beneath her is surprise and desire, not fear.

 

“You see, I wouldn’t lay my egg in your digestive tract,” Allura continues conversationally, grabbing two handfuls of arse to make her point, and also to pull him even tighter against her, his body shaking now with her thrusts. Even modified as he is, she’s so much stronger than him. “It would still adhere, but the location would damage it, and its growth would certainly damage you. No, my consort, an egg belongs in your brood pouch, and your body knows it. Any time I touched you, even just—” she trails her fingers lightly over his back and he shivers “—your egg channel would open for me, right…” She reaches up under him, presses hard against the flesh between his testicles and where she’s inside him. “Here,” and he moans. “You know what it looks like.”

 

“Yes,” Shiro says. He’s seen it on her plenty of times — an unremarkable hole behind her retracted ovipositor, so small that Shiro had fretted he’d hurt her by attempting to enter her until she’d laughed at the look on his face and shifted her body into the proper state for copulation.

 

Trying to fertilize one of her eggs internally hadn’t been particularly enjoyable for either one of them — she’s never been fond of being penetrated, and Shiro certainly isn’t fond of being the one to penetrate — at least until they stopped trying to be, as Matt puts it, “stupid vanilla” and let themselves be a bit smarter. It _had_ been rather enjoyable to make Shiro kneel for her and bring him to bed and fuck him with one of their lovely glass dildos and use his mouth and then ride him until she decided that he could finish, even if the ride itself felt like accidentally sitting on one of Alric’s toys.

 

Shiro needs no such games, though — he would love being taken there, unquestionably and unreservedly; soft and slick and open for her at the slightest touch, at her mere presence.

 

“It will take a month for me to prepare an egg, when I have decided that I wish to do so,” Allura says, leisurely fucking him at the pace she desires, “and I will keep you there with me the entire time — by my side, in my bed, until your body knows mine above all others. Until it responds only to me.”

 

“It already does,” Shiro says daringly.

 

“It does not, because it still responds to you,” Allura says, “and that is unacceptable to me. You only have one purpose during implant, my consort, and it is that which I give you, when and how I wish to do so.”

 

She presses hard again at the place where his opening would be, and his hips jerk into empty air. She won’t waste a precious egg on sterile sex and she hasn’t prepared one for implant even if she would, but her body desperately wants to produce one anyway, to lay her child deep within him, the muscles already flexing that would push the egg into a soft, dark part of his body, all her instincts clamoring to keep Shiro cloistered and safe until the egg casing dissolves within him and her child is ready to go out into the world.

 

“That is why you were made, my consort,” Allura tells him. “It’s why you exist, and your body knows this, it craves this purpose — slick and open every day until I decide that you’re done, waiting for me to grace you with my attentions, beyond your desire, beyond your _comfort._ ”

 

“Allura,” Shiro begs, and he’s not made like her but she can still almost feel his egg channel flex around her, slick and blood-hot as his body prepares to welcome whatever she gives him. “Allura—”

 

“I’ll have you anywhere I like,” Allura says harshly. “Any time I feel like it, you’ll be ready for me. In the night as you sleep, in the morning when you wake, in the middle of the throne room as dignitaries come to pay me tribute, every varga every day for a week — I’ll have you as I please, as much as I want.”

 

“ _Yes,_ ” Shiro moans.

 

“I’ll have you so many times that you’ll scarcely be able to walk by the end of it,” Allura tells him, fucking him harder now. “Or I won’t touch you at all, but I won’t dismiss you. I’ll have you at my side, in my bed, leave you empty and roused until you’re aching for my egg, and then I may _deign_ to use you if you are very, very good.”

 

“I will be,” Shiro promises raggedly. “I will, I will, I will —”

 

“I won’t permit you to be anything else,” Allura says, the unspoken threat behind her words like a sword next to a peace treaty, and she thrusts hard and pulls him up nearly astride her to hold him still, her ovipositor grown to its full size within him, and presses her hand to his belly.

 

“Can you feel it?” Allura asks him, asks them both, and an egg during implant is barely anything that could be felt in the wide egg channel and certainly nothing that could be felt from the outside, but Shiro still gasps quietly, and she knows that they both feel it within him, this seed of life, this piece of her deep in his body, claiming space within him just as she claims him from without.

 

“ _Yes,_ ” Shiro moans. “Yes, yes, yes —”

 

“Yes what?” Allura asks coldly. “Yes who?”

 

“Yes, Princess,” Shiro whispers.

 

“My clever consort,” Allura praises him, tugging at his collar as she begins to move within him again. “Clever and strong and beautiful. I’ll have you everywhere before I give you my egg. I’ll bend you over my throne, have on your back upon my war table, on your hands and knees in the middle of the street — my entire Empire will know who you belong to, how fine and good you are, they’ll all know what you are for —” and Shiro cries out and comes without ever having been touched, Allura gasping as he clenches hard around her.

 

He slumps in exhaustion, but doesn’t stop moving, working himself upon her as his thighs shake with the effort — always so eager to please and pleasure, her consort, always so dutiful, and she dumps him on his belly so she can hold him down and finish, thrusting deep and careless within him until the words and pleasure overwhelms her and orgasm burns through her, her markings flashing as she too cries out.

 

She stays laying on top of him for a long time, heart pounding as she slowly comes down from the height she placed herself upon. Eventually she pulls out as gently as she can and goes to clean herself up and fetch a washcloth for Shiro, but when she pads back into the bedroom, her ovipositor now retracted into its protective cavity, Shiro is still laying there silent, face-down into the pillow.

 

“Are you alright, my love?” Allura asks softly, sitting down next to him and stroking his shoulderblade.

 

“That was _great,_ ” Shiro mumbles, eyes closed. “We should do that again. A lot.”

 

“Perhaps,” she says, relieved. “Here, spread your legs for me, please.”

 

“I didn’t mean right away,” Shiro says, although he spreads his legs anyway.

 

“Just a washcloth,” Allura says, and cleans the now-tacky lubricant from his skin, petting his flank and back as she does so.

 

“Mm,” Shiro says, clearly only half-awake, and Allura finishes and gently rolls him to a part of their wide bed that doesn’t have an enormous wet spot, then slides in next to him, the previously unoccupied sheets at this end of the bed cool against her bare skin.

 

“You’re very good to me,” Allura whispers. She lightly touches the collar. “Would you like me to take this off now?”

 

“Leave it on, please,” Shiro mumbles.

 

He opens his arms to her without much opening his eyes, but instead of laying down mostly on top of him, as is their custom, she fits herself against his side instead, although she has to awkwardly clamber over him first so that she’s not stuck resting her head upon his metal arm. His slow, even breath stirs the fine hairs frizzing out from her braids, and she tucks her head against his chest, listening to his human heart beat beneath her.

 

“Is that something you’d want?” Allura asks eventually.

 

“Hmm?” Shiro asks absently. “More great sex? Yes.”

 

“A vagina,” Allura says. “That’s the human version of an egg channel, correct?”

 

Shiro cracks one eye open. “Uh, yeah, it is.”

 

“Pidge and I were discussing the human-specific procedure the other day,” Allura explains, sitting up so she can wiggle herself higher up his body and end up mostly face to face. “Matt had bet them that Alteans were like seahorses — have you heard of those? — and Pidge wished to prove him wrong, although I believe he is in fact right, at least in part. Unfortunate, because the bet involves money that he will no doubt spend on that odious algae alcohol.”

 

“Or gardening stuff,” Shiro says hopefully, looking slightly more awake now. “He said he’s been thinking about buying one of those balcony bubble greenhouses so he doesn’t have to move everything inside during the rainy months.”

 

“I hope so,” Allura says, although she privately doubts that hope is much use against unchecked alcoholism. “In any case, the conversation segued to something Pidge called gender confirmation surgery. I’ll confess that I still don’t understand how or what it’s supposed to be confirming, but it doesn’t sound that difficult to arrange, if a vagina — and a clitoris too, Pidge was very insistent on that — would be things you’d enjoy. I know you’re not particularly attached to your penis.”

 

Shiro makes a show of looking down at it and then back up at her. “I think I’m pretty attached.”

 

“Clearly Matt is, how would you put it — ‘rubbing off on you’?” Allura teases.

 

“Frequently,” Shiro says, grinning, although the smile dims slightly. “I just wish he’d visit so he could do it even more often.”

 

“I’ll convince him one day,” Allura promises.

 

“I really doubt it,” Shiro says sadly. He sighs and stretches out, toes curling and arms above his head, like he could physically slough off the worry of his troublesome lover’s spaceship phobia. “I thought you wanted Alric to have siblings.”

 

“I’m not sure what Matt has to do with that,” Allura says carefully, in case Shiro has some very inaccurate ideas about Matt’s inclination towards parenting in a non-emergency situation.

 

“Nothing, I’m talking about my penis,” Shiro says. “Well, not _nothing_ —”

 

“You’re right, I do want Alric to have siblings,” Allura says before Shiro can drag the three of them down that unfortunate road. “But I’m not sure how that’s relevant. Were we to have them, I would still incubate them, of course.”

 

“Were we to have them? I thought we _were_ having them,” Shiro says, frowning now.

 

“You did?” Allura asks, blinking.

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “You always say you want Alric to have siblings, I always say—”

 

“Not yet,” Allura recites.

 

“Not yet, not ‘not ever’,” Shiro says.

 

“I thought you were just gracefully demurring,” Allura admits.

 

“I wasn’t,” Shiro says, sounding very awake now and the slightest bit annoyed. “I meant not while Alric was still a baby — we couldn’t handle two babies and our other obligations, but now that he’s a little more independent… We should do it now, while he’s still young enough that there’s not a big age gap. And that’s why vaginoplasty isn’t possible. If we want another kid, I need the stuff I have.”

 

“Why? Oh, yes, testicles,” Allura says. They seem remarkably impractical organs to her, always getting in the way, but he and Matt do seem to enjoy Matt putting pinchy things on them, so she supposes that’s a point in their favor.

 

“We could simply harvest your fertilizing liquid now,” she offers, which Shiro makes a face at for some reason. “Or if you wish to still keep your current organs in lieu of the clitoris, we could probably manage that — it’d be more complex, certainly, with nerve generation and such, but we know some very clever scientists—”

 

“I’m not getting any surgeries I don’t need,” Shiro says flatly.

 

So that’s what this is about. “You don’t seem willing to get surgeries you _do_ need either,” Allura says sourly.

 

“My shoulder will heal on its own. Just give the pods time,” Shiro insists. “I’m not going under the knife, Allura. Never again, not for anything.”

 

“Even so that you’ll still have a working arm in five years?” Allura mutters.

 

Shiro ignores her. “Yes, you’re right — about the vaginoplasty,” he emphasizes, and sighs. “I think I’d enjoy that more than what I have right now, and in another world… well, in another world I wouldn’t be here with you, so I guess that’s not really relevant, and in this one, my body’s been changed enough. I’d rather just live with what I have.”

 

“I just want you to be happy, darling,” Allura tells him. “Happy and safe.”

 

“I know,” Shiro says, and leans across the pillow to kiss her, brief and sweet. “And I am.”

 

He smiles at her tenderly, the age-lines at the corners of his eyes creasing — so full of love, her partner, even when it’s ill-deserved and poorly rewarded, and she finds it hard to smile back, the words that had earlier seemed so right now gnawing away at the corners of the happiness she’s trying to conjure up.

 

“What’s wrong?” Shiro asks, frowning.

 

“Absolutely nothing,” Allura says, and he scowls, so she reluctantly adds, “Merely that I respect you very much.”

 

“Okay,” Shiro says slowly.

 

“As an equal,” Allura adds. “As my partner in all things.”

 

“Sure,” Shiro says.

 

“And I hope you don’t take words I said in the heat of passion as the truth in my heart,” Allura continues. “They’re not. I don’t believe that of you.”

 

“Believe what?” Shiro asks.

 

“That you’re… lesser,” Allura says, “or should be, or that I am greater, or should be.”

 

“I know you don’t,” Shiro says, with a casual certainty that Allura would have said a varga ago that she possessed as well. “But why do you need to make sure that I don’t?”

 

“Some of the things I said could be… mistaken,” Allura says.

 

“I thought the things you said were great,” Shiro says, grinning. “You don’t have to be worried that I thought that it was real.”

 

“Why not?” Allura asks, frowning. “I mean, why do you assume it was imagination?”

 

“Well…” Shiro says, looking confused, “for starters, we’ve had sex where I topped and you bottomed —” they both make identical faces of distaste “—when we were trying to make Alric, and I don’t remember the kind of, uh, _response_ you described.”

 

“You’re not an Altean, darling,” Allura reminds him. “You don’t give off the necessary pheromones to elicit anything so dramatic. Even if you were, I would be the one producing the egg, so it would be me who gave off said pheromones, not you. Not to say that I don’t enjoy what you _do_ elicit, of course.”

 

“So that was… That sort of thing happened?” Shiro asks, frowning now.

 

“Not by my father’s time,” Allura answers honestly. “They’d done away with the more public aspect, and it was fashionable to be more permissive of the lesser partner’s… well, _comfort._ To spoil them, as it were. Not that certain people didn’t still practice the old ways, but it was considered rather gauche.”

 

“Wait, then, did your— I mean, I thought your parents were—” Shiro fumbles.

 

“Fashionable?” Allura asks, and Shiro nods. “Yes. They were almost egalitarian and completely monogamous. Very scandalous.” She smiles, wry and sad. “It didn’t much help Father’s popularity at Court, and apparently made things very difficult for my mother. Grandmother was most displeased. I’m amazed that she never had my mother disposed of.”

 

She swallows hard, then softer, she adds, “Perhaps she felt that was enough that my mother was in near-constant mourning dress for one dead egg after another. My siblings. Or what would have been them, anyway. I was never sure if it was something wrong with Father or if Grandmother had a hand in it, but I wouldn’t put it past her to dose my mother somehow to push Father into taking a different, less socially radical spouse, or at least an additional one who was more biddable.”

 

“I’m guessing your grandmother wasn’t so fashionable, then,” Shiro says.

 

“She loathed the trend towards ‘comfort’,” Allura says. “She thought it was a foreign affectation that would result in an utter societal breakdown. The fact that her grandparent reportedly felt the same about the concept of having genders seems to have been lost on her. Although Altea really did start to break down under Father, so maybe Grandmother had a point.”

 

“That you should force your spouses?” Shiro asks.

 

“It wasn’t force,” Allura tries to explain. “Nor brutality. It was simply… what one did. What we did, one of the customs that made us _us_ , like drinking arram or wearing pink at funerals or singing at birthdays. It was how we knew who were were. Or so I believed, at least.”

 

“Did you,” Shiro starts, but trails off into silence.

 

“Force anyone?” Allura asks softly. “No. At least, I don’t believe I did. I never took a spouse, but I had lovers, and they all seemed to enjoy me. Of course, I was the Crown Princess, so they would have ‘enjoyed’ me even if I were a brute. I certainly never had anyone refuse my affections. Or interest, I suppose, not affection. I didn’t particularly care for any of them. They were either simpering fools or very clever people who wanted a way to whisper in my ear.”

 

She reaches out to brush a lock of white hair out of Shiro’s face, and a small part of her cries out in wounded relief when he leans into her touch, eyes closing. “I’d never bedded a social equal before you. I’d never even _had_ a social equal before you and the other paladins. You’ve taught me so many things, my love. Given me so many gifts.”

 

“Okay, then what’s the problem?” Shiro asks. “You’re not that person anymore. Today was just historical fiction.”

 

“Perhaps,” Allura says, still disquieted.

 

Shiro snorts. “You should talk to Matt. You two can bond over Buffy the Vampire Slayer and beating yourself up because of your tastes in bed games.”

 

“In the interest of him speaking to me ever again, I don’t think I shall,” Allura says.

 

“That’s what he thinks you’d do if he ever admitted that he was a sadist, and you already know he is and still talk to him twice a week,” Shiro points out.

 

“Yes, he does want to hurt you — quite a lot, actually,” she says, and Shiro grins into the pillow, “but he’s always so careful never to do anything with you that you don’t want with all your heart.” She sighs. “I can’t imagine it would go well to tell him that I’d take you against your will.”

 

“I am willing,” Shiro reminds her.

 

“Yes, but I’m not sure that I would care if you weren’t,” Allura says softly. “In fact, I believe that’s part of the appeal.”

 

“I don’t know if you remember, but it was part of the appeal for me too,” Shiro says with a teasing smile, but she simply sighs and tucks herself back into his open arms, shifting herself smaller so he can envelop her all the more.

 

“This really bothers you,” Shiro says, frowning.

 

“Yes, it does,” Allura admits. Not an easy thing to admit. Never easy to admit anything, not even to Shiro.

 

“Would you like to try it for real?” Shiro asks carefully. “Not _real_ real, but actually roleplaying it. Not just talking through it.”

 

“I won’t subject you to that,” Allura says gently, and as Shiro opens his mouth to no doubt protest that he’s never been violated in that particular way and so, as a service to her, pretending would actually be a pleasure, she adds, “nor will I subject myself to the crude assassination attempt that would no doubt follow when Matt finds out that I did that, even as a game.”

 

Shiro sighs, but doesn’t argue with that. Matt’s a rather floppy double-edged sword and she often wonders if Shiro would be better off if he were gone from their lives for good, but they’re forever bound together, her partner and that man, by something so integral to everything that they’ve both become, and Allura won’t be the woman who goes around assassinating her partner’s lovers because they sometimes cause him true pain, not the kind that comes at the end of a clothespin.

 

But even with Matt’s many, _many_ flaws, she’d be a fool to forget that there are quite a lot of messily dead people who can attest to how dangerous he can be when he truly sets his mind to it, and she doesn’t want to have to kill him for his loyalty. Matt is her friend, and Shiro would never forgive her.

 

“If you won’t believe me, talk to someone else then,” Shiro says.

 

“Who would you suggest?” Allura asks. “Hunk? Lance? _Keith_?”

 

“Pidge,” Shiro suggests.

 

“It would get back to Matt,” Allura says, sighing. “They’re talking again.”

 

“I know, it’s great,” Shiro says, his eyes soft with love even at the merest mention of Matt. Never let it be said that Shiro has good taste in lovers. “What about Coran?”

 

“I’m _not_ talking to Coran,” Allura says.

 

“Why not?” Shiro argues. “He’d probably be the best person here. He has perspective.”

 

“And that’s exactly why he’s the worst person to speak to about it,” Allura says.

 

“What?” Shiro asks. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

 

“We should probably change the sheets before Alric returns for his afternoon nap, he’ll want to take it in our bed,” Allura says briskly, rolling out of bed to slip on a bedchamber robe so she can strip the sheets from the mattress, with or without Shiro on top of them.

 

Shiro props himself up on an elbow and scowls at her. “So you’re just not going to talk to me.”

 

“I’ve said everything I need to say, and I shall think further on what you told me,” Allura says. “Isn’t that the ideal outcome of such a discussion?”

 

“Allura—” Shiro starts.

 

“Shiro, please,” Allura says. “We don’t have much time until we have to go back to our lives, and I’d rather not spend it quarreling.”

 

“Fine,” Shiro says, although she’s under absolutely no illusion that this is the last she’ll hear of it. “Do we even have clean sheets?”

 

“Yes, I did laundry last night while I was listening to our spymaster’s reports,” Allura says, letting the ends of the fitted sheet she’s stripping snap to the center of the bed where Shiro lays until he’s surrounded by them, looking like a particularly irritable sandwich filling. “They’re in that cupboard there.”

 

Shiro fights free of the sheets and tries to put on his pants and fetch the new sheets at the same time, hopping and nearly crashing into the cupboard bad shoulder first, and then Allura almost trips over the stuffed Penicillium Chrysogenum plushie that Matt had given Alric for his second birthday on her way to put the dirty sheets in the hamper. It had seemed so charming and novel for the first few years to not have any domestic servants, just Castle cleaning bots with limited dexterity, but if it hadn’t lost its charm before they had a child, it certainly has now.

 

She’s considered trying to convince the others to hire at least one or two servants — Lance and Pidge would probably go for it, Hunk she’s not sure about, and Keith and Shiro would definitely not — but she’s reluctant to let a stranger into her home, even simply to freshen her bedsheets. There are staff who stay onboard while they’re docked on Olkarion, as they have been ever since the disastrous battle in the Mnenmus, but they don’t live aboard, and Team Voltron are all very careful to keep the children separate from any Alliance personnel, Maze especially.

 

Coran has been none-too-subtly hinting that they should find a dedicated nurse for Alric to ease the pressure of essentially raising three children off of Lance, but Allura’s even less enthusiastic about that idea than that of domestic servants. There have been kidnap and assassination attempts on all of them before, the children included — although mercifully no attempts were skilled enough for the children to even know that they’d occurred — and neither she nor Shiro are keen to entrust Alric to a stranger.

 

In the privacy of her own mind, she can admit that there are other reasons for her reluctance. At least with Lance, she can tell herself that he’s just babysitting Alric, not actually raising him. She can pretend that she’s more than an occasional visitor in her child’s life.

 

A life that seems to go faster and shorter with every moment, too. It’s been a mere three years since Alric was born, and he’s already weaned and running and playing and scribbling and talking in full if simple sentences when the mood strikes him. Were he a trueblood Altean, at three years old he would barely be a newborn, still nursing and small enough to be held in the crook of her arm.

 

She wasn’t particularly present for that stage of his life either — she pumped milk and held him when she could and passed him to Lance when she couldn’t as she ran sleepless from ally to ally and battlefield to battlefield and the Mnenmus System burned — but she misses it, the days when she truly believed that her son would match her own thousand-year lifespan and not Shiro’s. She still hopes, and they won’t know for a very long time, but she no longer believes.

 

“It wouldn’t be any easier with another child,” Allura tells Shiro as she helps him fit the new bedsheet to the mattress. “Being apart from them so much. Lotor is still active, if retreating, but now we have many small fires to address rather than one large one. If anything, the children might end up feeling more deprived, because we’d have less time to spend with each one.”

 

“It’d be good for Alric to have a sibling,” Shiro says stubbornly. “He’d be less lonely.”

 

“He’s not lonely,” Allura says.

 

“He will be,” Shiro predicts. “Maze doesn’t really like being around him, Xio is eleven years older than him, and we don’t have any other kids on the Castle. He’s young enough now that a second kid would be pretty close to him in age. Enough to be playmates, at least.”

 

“Darling, be realistic,” Allura says wryly, bending to pick up the plushie so she can put it in the toy hamper. “He’d hate having to share us. Look at Maze and Xiomara.”

 

“Exactly. They’re close,” Shiro argues, absently neatening the bedsheet corners with unconscious military precision.

 

“After two years of Xiomara wanting to throw her sister out of the nearest airlock,” Allura points out, picking up a single small shoe, no mate in sight. “Or wanting someone else to adopt her. I believe she was planning to post a listing online before Pidge stopped her.”

 

“I thought you wanted to have more kids,” Shiro says.

 

“I do,” Allura says, casting around for Alric’s other shoe. “And I also think it would be good for him to have siblings. We’d both have been much happier as children had we had any. But — well, frankly, otherwise it’s a terrible idea,” she confesses. “We’re not very good parents to Alric. We’re barely there. What right do we have to inflict our lives on another child?”

 

“We’re good enough,” Shiro says, and then immediately looks surprised at the words that came out of his mouth.

 

“We do love him,” Allura agrees. “So very much.”

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says thickly. “As long as he knows that — as long as he’s not lonely, even if he’s not… with us — he’ll be okay. Good. He’ll be good.”

 

“And thus, sadly, testicles,” Allura says just to make him laugh, and indeed he does, the sadness sinking back into whatever small, disbelieving part of him can’t let go of it.

 

“Sadly testicles,” Shiro agrees, picking Alric’s inside-out pajama pants off the floor.

 

“Our syringe attempt was unpleasant, certainly, but it wasn’t awful,” Allura presses, dumping her armful of Alric’s toys into the toy hamper and then fishing out all the clothes that Alric had put in there. “If you wanted to go that route so that you would be able to…”

 

What? _Have the body that you want? Have a body that doesn’t include parts from other people, willing and unwilling? Be able to even have an IV inserted without flying into a blind rage? Recover from the terrors implanted under the skin of your soul?_

 

Not terribly eloquently, she attempts a gesture in the general direction of the object in question instead.

 

“I’d rather have bad sex than jerk off into a cup and have you stuck dealing with lukewarm semen,” Shiro says, since he’s quite considerate even if he’s not very good at charades.

 

“And I do thank you for that,” Allura says, making a face. The syringe hadn’t been awful, but it had certainly been awful-adjacent.

 

“You’re welcome,” Shiro says, coming up behind her to drop the pajama pants in the proper hamper. He embraces her, his chest to her back and his chin hooked over her shoulder, and she can feel the soft leather of the collar he’s still wearing pressing against her neck, the silver clasp body-warm on her skin.

 

“Is this a plan?” Allura asks softly. “Are we doing this?”

 

“It’s way too disorganized to be a plan,” Shiro says. “But I want to do it. If you do.”

 

“I do,” Allura says, and twists around to look at him, because this isn’t the sort of thing one should declare to a wall instead of one’s partner. He pulls back from her, reaching out to thumb one of her facial markings, and they find themselves grinning nervously at each other, a little stunned.

 

“Alright, darling,” Allura murmurs, leaning in for a kiss. “Let us do this terrible thing.”

 

*

 

They don’t, of course, although they do manage to finish cleaning up after Alric and even get in several wonderful dobash of kissing before the pager tone goes off on Allura’s datapad and Xiomara simultaneously comes to pound on their door and shout that her Papá has a meeting so someone needs to take Alric or else she will, which makes Shiro scramble madly out the door, nearly breaking the clasp of the collar in his haste to remove it.

 

Even if Allura didn’t have to spend a month preparing an egg within her, diverting blood and nutrients towards its growth so that it was strong enough to survive being fertilized, she wouldn’t rush into the process of creating another life until she puts her own in order. There are diplomatic timelines to consider, duties that she must delegate for at least the first few months of their infant’s life, representatives that she must arrange, and the matter of the nurse must be resolved, because the prospect of Xiomara babysitting her infant is enough to make Allura feel safer with the potential assassins, so that’s yet another thing to add to her task list, though she still rather petulantly puts it at the bottom.

 

“Would you like me to be taking notes, Princess?” her personal secretary Taz leans over and whispers to her, and Allura blinks herself out of the stupor she’s found herself in, although she doubts that everyone else listening to Interior Secretary Fada Mure drone on about unity and tradition and such is entirely present either.

 

“What?” Allura asks, and she looks down to see the list she’d been absent-mindedly writing: _Allisha, Allusha, Alrisha, Altisha, Alkor, Alnor, Almis…_ “Oh. No, they’re not notes, they’re, uh, names.”

 

“Are they people you’d like to be addressed?” Taz whispers back.

 

“No, no. Shiro’s friend is pimping out Plachu and Chuchule,” Allura quietly blurts out. “Or doing them a favor, perhaps, I don’t think he’s getting compensation. These are names for their potential offspring.”

 

“Oh,” Taz says, not the least bit surprised, although it would take a lot more than mouse pimps to surprise her. Lotor could probably drop a bomb on the small council right now and Taz wouldn’t be surprised. A most invaluable quality in a personal secretary. “You’re naming them after yourself?”

 

“In a manner of speaking,” Allura whispers, although they are in fact names after herself and Shiro, since Shiro had complained when Alric was named that he’d only gotten an _r_ and an _i_ , even though she’d pointed out quite reasonably that Alric’s dynastic prefix should hardly count, so she’d finished worse than he with a single _r_ from her name. “Plachu and Chuchule are dear friends, after all.”

 

“Hm,” Taz says softly. She points to the last name on the list. “I like _Almis_. That sounds like a person you’d want to know, doesn’t it?”

 

“I suppose so,” Allura says, although she’s surprised she even wrote that one down, even in her stupor. There’s a very small part of her that’s shocked that the Ten Heavens didn’t stop her heart as soon as she put the _alm_ to writing, but perhaps divine edicts weaken a bit when the demigoddess who issued them is dead along with all her subjects — although if anyone would be able to reach past the grave to strike down the blasphemous living, it would be grandmother Allira. “The _alm_ was a glyph that wasn’t seen much in Altea. Or rather, it was very common at one point, but it became unfashionable before my time.”

 

It became illegal, actually, but Allura doesn’t particularly feel like explaining her aunts’ attempted coup and their mother’s move to literally erase them from Altean history, treacherous Almira and Almalor only to be referred to as “—” and “—” in every record ever written of them and the primary glyph of their name struck from the list of legal names, although that hardly affected anyone outside the royal family, since the _Al-_ marker was a privilege only afforded to that dynasty. Most royal squabbles and edicts only affected the royal family, really, except those that caused a lot of commoners and foreigners to die.

 

Taz would understand — she’s ruthlessly pragmatic, another invaluable quality in a personal secretary — but secrets have an unfortunate habit of traveling from friendly mouths into unfriendly ears. The galaxy has done such a good job rewriting the story of her people, and Allura would rather not destabilize herself by discouraging their fantasies.

 

“Oh, excellent, we’ve moved on to another speaker,” Allura notes, watching Fada Mure be replaced by a scowling Chimsan in a military dress uniform jangling under the weight of far too many medals for the person wearing them to actually be that commendable. “Colonel Moon, what a surprise. He always wants to start a war somewhere, so I suppose I’d better listen to him.”

 

And yet it’s Taz who ends up doing most of the listening while Allura’s mind drifts, and the rest of the day passes under a similar eclipse of distraction, as if the now-reduced Ten Heavens had settled for annoy rather than annihilate, and she receives reports and visitors and decides a hundred thousand tiny important things before she gives up and admits to herself that she can barely remember the order she issued ten dobash ago, and that’s not an ideal state in which to conduct a war, especially one as unwieldy as this.

 

The threat of gruesome conquest and retaliation from Zarkon and then Lotor had managed to hammer out an uneasy unity amongst the planets and powers of the Voltron Coalition, but now that the moon of the Galra Empire wanes and the Voltron Coalition has become the Galactic Alliance, they are paying dearly for that unity, and all the political, ethnic, and economic cracks obscured under the hammering are starting to show. They’ll be immensely lucky if the conflict is limited to a few civil wars rather than interplanetary ones, with Shon Mir’s close allies eyeing each other uneasily and Chimsan and Lanastadam once again spitting vitriol at each other in the press.

 

Not for the first time, Allura wishes that there was a higher authority to appeal to than goodwill, for goodwill does not possess armies other than perhaps Voltron — Voltron the armed peacekeepers, Voltron the fist of the greater good. The irony does not escape her, though thankfully it has escaped almost everyone else in the Alliance.

 

“Taz, please respond to what messages you can and hold the ones you cannot,” Allura finally says, getting up from her purposefully very comfortable chair, built to withstand many nights of sleeping at her desk. “I’ll be taking tea in my personal quarters for a varga. No pages, please, unless something very large is on fire that you cannot put out.”

 

Taz’s tendrils wave her acknowledgement, and Allura strides off to take the elevator up to the personal quarters of the Paladins of Voltron and the last survivors of Altea, all two and a half of them. She’s never sure how to count Alric — he is Altean, she’ll tolerate no other opinions on that, but he’s not a survivor of anything, except perhaps bathtime.

 

Coran is alone in the kitchen when she arrives, absently humming along to a pop song playing on the radio on the counter, although he jumps up to turn it off as she wearily walks in.

 

“{{No, Coran, it’s entirely fine}},” Allura tells him in High Altean, gracious although there’s a part of her that dearly wants to find somewhere to take her break where he’s not, the morning’s activities with Shiro weighing heavy on her mind. “{{You can turn it back on, I quite like this song.}}”

 

Coran bows, then turns the radio back up, though not as loud as before. It’s not often that she sets aside Universal and speaks in High Altean instead, and the words of her childhood sound foreign to her ears as they come from her tongue.

 

She never used to speak to anyone in any dialect of Altean, High, Middle, or Low —although she has an admittedly tenuous grasp of the Low dialect, it being far below her social station and having learned it from books because she had been bored at Court — as she was too concerned with seeming distant before the aliens who were her allies and professed to be her friends.

 

Now they are in truth her friends, a concept still strange to her sometimes — that she can afford to trust anyone to become _friends_ with them, and stranger still, that they’ve repaid her lapse in judgement with loyalty and love. One of them is not just her friend but her _partner_ as well, which is even stranger than trustworthy friends, and he’s a roundear at that, a roundear whose child she proudly incubated in her body — her beloved Alric, an only half-Altean child who she openly claims as her heir and a continuance of the Al’Ten dynasty, a child whose birth was ecstatically reported on in the news all across the galaxy instead of hushed up under the threat of execution… there it passes from strange into bizarre, and she wakes in the middle of the night sometimes, convinced that the palace guards are about to burst into her bedchamber and drag Shiro and Alric away and escort her up to the royal family’s small chamber.

 

Hers is a family of nightmares, it seems. Shiro regularly wakes up roaring and screaming, she startles from sleep after her terrors looking for her swordstaff, and Alric has many different nightmares, but his most recent ones seem to involve ‘clowns’, an Earther tradition that she privately finds just as terrifying as Alric does. She half suspects that Lance read him that clown book as revenge for Shiro teaching Xiomara how to rock climb.

 

“{{What are you working on?}}” Allura asks Coran, resigning herself to his company as this is where the food lives and she won’t be the kind of spoiled royal who throws someone out of their communal kitchen.

 

Coran tilts his datapad so she can see the book he’s reading, which appears to be full of old maps of the Altean Empire. “{{Xiomara’s tutor asked for my assistance in teaching her pre-Galran history. There’s not much surviving from that time period, thanks to the Galra’s purges, so a primary source such as myself is worth his weight in quintessence.}}”

 

“{{Appropriate history, I hope}},” Allura says. “{{Xiomara is a very smart girl, but she’s not particularly discreet.}}”

 

“{{Of course, Princess}},” Coran says. “{{“Expansion”, not conquest.}}”

 

“{{The grateful populace welcoming the Alteans rescuing them from local despots, throwing flowers under our armies’ feet}},” Allura says. “{{Not that we would have reacted well had they thrown rocks instead.}}” She fishes the container of Hunk’s delicious cookies out of the cooler and sits down at the table with Coran. “{{Do you know that in some places we “expanded” into, infant mortality rates went from one in five to less than 0.003%?}}”

 

“{{I seem to recall hearing that}},” Coran agrees.

 

“{{I wonder if that was true}},” Allura muses. “{{It certainly sounds good.}}”

 

“{{I believe it may have been a... slight exaggeration}},” Coran says delicately. “{{My aunt was on the Council of Public Health for the Empire.}}” His mustache twitches in amusement. “{{Altea would have rioted had it been public knowledge how much of the Treasury was spent on public hospitals on other planets. Not to mention all the schools, ports, universities, infrastructure, industry, entire cities…}}”

 

“{{Yes, the trappings of civilization for those we felt deserved them}},” Allura says sarcastically, “{{which wouldn’t be complete without prisons, police, and armies. Simply for the safety of the populace and to defend our interests, of course. And to acquire them.}}”

 

“{{Is there any reason you’re in such a… contemplative mood?}}” Coran asks.

 

Allura munches on the cookie for a moment, weighing the benefits and detractions of premature disclosure.

 

“{{Shiro and I may be having a second child}},” she says eventually, doing her best not to spit crumbs on the table, although her best is not quite good enough. “{{Not immediately, but soon. Within the year, perhaps.}}”

 

“{{Congratulations, Princess!}}” Coran exclaims, jumping from his seat in excitement.

 

“{{Thank you}},” Allura says, smiling, “{{but we haven’t done anything yet.}}” Except to tell Shiro how very much she’d like to lay her egg in him whilst she fucks him on her Imperial war table. “{{Merely talked about it.}}”

 

“{{But you think you will}},” Coran says.

 

“{{Yes, I think we will}},” Allura agrees, trying hard to sound resolute instead of equal parts giddy and nauseous.

 

“{{Another Altean}},” Coran says, suspiciously teary-eyed, and with sadness, she remembers that he’s long past the age when he would still be able to successfully incubate his own egg.

 

“{{Indeed}},” Allura says. “{{And another Al’Ten.}}” She snorts. “{{My line does seem remarkably adept at surviving political upheaval, doesn’t it? Even the destruction of our species wasn’t enough to end us.}}”

 

“{{You’re very resilient, Princess}},” Coran says, sounding confused at her bitter tone.

 

“{{Matt says we’re like cockroaches}},” Allura says. “{{And after he explained his reasoning, I do rather think that I agree, although not where Shiro can hear. I doubt he’d take kindly to anyone calling his son vermin. I normally wouldn’t either, except Matt seemed so excited about their radiation resistance, so I think he may have actually meant it as a compliment. Why do you always use my title when addressing me?}}”

 

Coran looks at her in surprise. “{{It would be improper to address you as anything else.}}”

 

“{{You have no trouble being improper with the others here, Coran}},” Allura points out. “{{You hardly address Shiro as Black Paladin every time you trip over his boots.}}”

 

“{{He’s not Allura, first of her name, former Crown Princess of Altea}},” Coran says.

 

“{{Thank goodness for that. The galaxy would be a far worse place were there two of me}},” Allura says. Coran, she notes with some amusement, does not object. “{{Taz suggested we name this new child Almis.}}”

 

Coran blinks furiously. “{{Does she}}—” he fumbles.

 

“{{Know that the _alm_ is blasphemous? No}},” Allura says. “{{But she only suggested it to me because it was on the list of names I’d drawn up instead of listening to our friend Fada Mure orate.}}”

 

Coran frowns in confusion. “{{But why}}—”

 

“{{Because I like it}},” Allura says curtly, knowing that she’s being petulant and not caring enough to stop. “{{That is why.}}”

 

“{{If you’ll forgive me, Your Highness, that would seem to me to be a rather… portentous name}},” Coran says. “{{The _alm_ brings a long shadow.}}”

 

“{{There were many in my family who were named with the _alm_ before Almira and Almalor}},” Allura says, noting Coran’s flinch, “{{and they were not all plotters and traitors, or at least no more than the rest of my kin. I think I can forgive two long-dead women their betrayals — especially since, in the end, the only people they harmed were themselves. It seems pointless to deny my child something merely for the sake of my grandmother’s revenge.}}”

 

She holds up a hand to forestall his objection. “{{Yes, she might have called it justice, but it’s laughable for someone to call down the kinslayer’s curse when she herself was a kinslayer. It was hardly a secret that Grandmother poisoned her uncle to gain the throne, even if the book of the dead listed his death as a stroke. I should think the Heavens would have little interest in humoring her hypocritical edicts on her daughters.}}”

 

“{{As you say, Princess}},” Coran says, clearly uncomfortable with her flippancy.

 

“{{Did you know her at all, Coran?}}” Allura asks. “{{My grandmother.}}”

 

“{{Not very well}},” Coran says slowly. “{{Not nearly as well as I knew your father. My grandfather built the Castle for her, though.}}”

 

Allura looks at the grey walls that have been her home for the last twenty years. “{{Hm. Yes. It occurs to me that we’re very similar, she and I.}}”

 

“{{You and Allira VI?}}” Coran asks, frowning. “{{I… suppose I see some resemblance.}}”

 

“{{I was referring to the Castle, actually}},” Allura says. “{{She and I were both never put to the purpose for which we were created, were we? The Castle was the most incredible warship the galaxy had ever seen — a planet-killer with technology so advanced your grandfather’s team could scarcely dream it up. She was built to be the absolute fist of our Empire, and instead she’s spent most of her life grounded on Arus and then as an antiquated home for wandering diplomats.}}”

 

“{{She’s seen battle, Princess}},” Coran says.

 

“{{Not the kind she was made for}},” Allura says. “{{And neither have I.}}”

 

Coran looks at her for a moment, then starts to pull things out of the cupboards — a small glass jar full of rattling red seeds, two fine clay cups, two plates. After a moment, Allura gets up to fill a pot with water to set upon the stove for the arram.

 

“{{I hope you don’t think that you lack purpose}},” Coran says, his head halfway in a cupboard as he rummages around for the measuring spoon. “{{You’ve done so much for this galaxy.}}”

 

“{{No. If anything, I have too much purpose these days, and I could probably do with a bit less}},” Allura says tiredly. “{{Merely that it’s far from what Grandmother intended for me when she named me Father’s heir.}}”

 

“{{Do you regret it?}}” Coran asks, setting the arram instruments on the kitchen table. “{{The way your life has gone. How you’ll be remembered.}}”

 

Allura looks at him in surprise. “{{You know, you’ve never asked me that. Even before Father’s policies were enacted and Altea fell.}}”

 

“{{Well, you’ve never told me that you were like an antiquated battleship}},” Coran says. “{{You’ve never said much of anything on the topic.}}”

 

“{{And you’ve been very good at not asking}},” Allura says wryly.

 

“{{Grief requires time}},” Coran says, uncharacteristically serious, and she knows that he’s thinking of his wives and his little ones, burned up in Zarkon’s fury. He doesn’t speak of them often, but he’s said that he’s glad they died that way — that they weren’t killed in the bloody purges afterwards as a hundred conquered worlds rose up against the suddenly vulnerable Alteans who had executed their kings and used up their children.

 

It was Camira’s birthday recently, Allura suddenly remembers. He hadn’t said anything about her lapse, but she should offer to sing a remembrance song with him anyway. Better to be late than to be forgotten. Better to be honest than to deceive a friend when she doesn’t need to.

 

“{{I don’t know}},” Allura says, even though she knows the words that the part of him that is good wants to hear: _No, I regret nothing._ “{{I’ve spent my new life fighting for a peace that depends on the goodwill of those who have very little goodness. I have to smile at petty lordlings and little despots and beg for their help and loyalty when they should be begging me. I have no armies of my own, no subjects but you, no wealth but what I can sell and beg. I don’t even have any real power other than what they believe that I do. I’m a Crown Princess of a crown that doesn’t even exist anymore as anything but lies and propaganda passed down as history. I’m nothing, Coran. Nothing at all.}}”

 

“{{You’re Princess Allura of Altea}},” Coran says.

 

“{{Smoke and shadows}},” Allura says. “{{I was Crown Princess Allura of the Altean Empire, first of my name. I should have been Empress. Instead I’m a children’s story.}}”

 

“{{The Empire had already passed by your time, Princess}},” Coran says gently. “{{It was rotting long before Alfor took the throne, and he couldn’t save it. You couldn’t have saved it either.}}”

 

Allura looks down at the pot of water heating ever so slowly on the stove. Normally she would simply use the electric kettle to heat water, but there’s an exacting art to making Altean arram. Water too cold, and the seeds won’t unfurl and release their flavor; water too hot, and the seeds will burn to bitterness. It requires close watching, careful handling. Her grandmother was very good at making it. She had a hunter’s patience and quick instinct, always knowing when to take the water from the flame.

 

“{{No. I could have saved it}},” Allura says. “{{At cost. I could have made us great again. If Father’s disastrous reign had continued longer, if Zarkon had poorer weapons…}}” She swallows, then continues very quietly, “{{…I might have found the courage to act against him. I loved Father very much, Coran, but we were dying.}}”

 

She laughs bitterly. “{{And, of course, I wanted to be Empress.}}”

 

“{{You were well-named}},” Coran says, something unreadable in his expression.

 

“{{I was}},” Allura says. “{{Perhaps I should have changed it for my second life.}}”

 

“{{The water, Princess}},” Coran says urgently, and she looks down to find it boiling.

 

“{{Oh}}, [[fuck!]]” Allura says, lapsing into crude Low Altean, and whisks the pot off the stove.

 

“{{It’ll be alright}},” Coran says, peering into the pot. “{{Just let it cool before you pour.}}”

 

“{{You should pour}},” Allura says, and Coran sputters.

 

“{{Your Highness, you don’t— I hope I didn’t}}—” he says.

 

“{{Smoke and shadows, Coran}},” Allura reminds him with a weary smile, and pointedly switches to Middle Altean. “{I don’t really outrank you, not anymore, and I could do with a dose of humility right now.}”

 

Coran nods, and almost bows before he apparently thinks better of it. Instead, he goes to the cooler to fetch the thick fruits-cake that the humans wrinkle their noses at and Alric spits out. Alteans have different palates, she supposes.

 

“{Do you think the Galra are right about genetics?}” Allura muses, starting to measure out tiny spoonfuls of the arram seeds into the cups as the subordinate person should. “{Not the cullings or their own supremacy, of course, but being able to breed for certain traits.}”

 

“{To eliminate certain genetic diseases, perhaps, or make a certain phenotype more common, but even those}—” Coran says, but Allura shakes her head.

 

“{Not bodies. Characteristics},” Allura says. “{Things like ambition. Cleverness. Ruthlessness. Brutality.}”

 

“{I don’t know},” Coran says, gently fanning the cooling water in the pot. “{Your father is a good argument for no.}”

 

“{Perhaps he was just a mutant},” Allura says wryly. She sighs. “{I wonder why Grandmother didn’t just name me as her heir and skip him.}”

 

“{It was his birthright, and she loved him},” Coran says simply. “{And for all his faults and weaknesses, he was always very good at dealing with her.}”

 

“{He was very charming},” Allura agrees. “{He had this incredible gift for seeming so… wise, even when he was being a sentimental fool. And he was an excellent military commander, so I suppose he had at least some measure of brutality. A disastrous King, though. Billions died because of his faults and weaknesses. In the end, he was more dangerous than Grandmother.}”

 

“{I would imagine that’s a matter of perspective},” Coran says, taking the pot from the stove and transferring the hot water into one of Shiro’s many, _many_ teapots. Shiro doesn’t exactly collect them, but he always seems to end up receiving them as gifts and never gets rid of any of them. “{I doubt any of the peoples she conquered would agree with that assessment.}”

 

“{And yet now they all see the Castle in their skies and think hope},” Allura says. “{It’s amazing what living under eight hundred years of the Galra’s repression and propaganda will do to the memory of old Empires past.}”

 

“{Truth is very fragile, Pri—}” Coran pauses, then says tentatively, “{Allura.}”

 

Allura smiles at him — a true smile, not a Princess’s smile, and he beams back as he brings the water to the table.

 

“{I suppose we have Father to thank for our current reputation — or to blame, depending on perspective},” Allura says, cutting into the densely-packed fruits-cake. “{And now I continue what he started. The good work.}”

 

“{Not just good},” Coran says. “{What was it that Matt used to call it? The right work?}”

 

“{The righteous work},” Allura says, remembering. “{You know, he doesn’t believe in that anymore. Righteousness, his god, any of it. We’ve had a few discussions about it. I believe he enjoys poking me in sore spots.}”

 

“{Does he know you’re a demigoddess?}” Coran asks, carefully pouring the hot water into the clay cups.

 

“{Yes, he thought it was very amusing},” Allura says. “{Especially because I apparently had mashed tuber in my hair at the time. Alric has always been such an… enthusiastic eater. Except when he refuses to eat anything, of course.}”

 

“{He knows his own mind. Much like his mother in that way},” Coran says, gentle and fond, and for a very brief moment, she wishes very much that this man had been her father instead of the man and King she had loved so terribly and still does.

 

“{I hope Alric will take more after Shiro than I},” Allura says. “{Well, some parts of Shiro, at least.}”

 

“{You chose well, Princess},” Coran says simply.

 

“{Yes, I think I did},” Allura says, looking down at her arram, the water in her cup turning blood-red as the seeds release their color. “{I have a good life. Much better than I thought I would.}”

 

“{To righteousness and our good lives},” Coran proposes, waving the blessing over their arram. “{To Princess Allura of Altea.}”

 

“{To sentimental, optimistic, thankless fools},” Allura says, and picks up the knife. “{Now, how big a piece of cake do you want?}”

 

*

 

The _alm_ sits under her tongue for the rest of the day, a tongue and gums stained red with arram, sound mouthed over reports and messages and dinner at her desk. It is a good sound. _Almis._ It is, as Taz says, the name of someone Allura would like to know.

 

She never knew her aunts. Her father Alfor was barely a babe in the cradle at the time of the coup. Had his sisters succeeded in overthrowing their mother, he would have had to be swiftly disposed of as a threat to their power, an infant Emperor under whose name rebel lords could call up armies. Almalor and Almira would have put their baby brother to the sword before their feet even touched the platform of the throne, and then they would have torn the Empire apart fighting for control of it, who knows how many lives burned up like dry wood in the wildfires of their ambition.

 

They were not stupid women. Had Allira hesitated when her spymaster brought her proof of their treason, their plot might have worked. Allira did not, and she saved countless numbers of her subjects with the swiftness and decisiveness of her actions — thousands upon thousands of innocents who had no real interest in which sister sat upon the throne and yet would be forced to fight for these sisters anyway, dragged to their deaths by fiat. Allira was everything the Empress of Altea should be when she sentenced her rebellious daughters to death.

 

If Allura were a better person, perhaps she would simply be unable to comprehend the horror of it, how love and greed and birthright and sacred duty could twist into such a sick rope that sisters could plot to kill an infant brother, that a mother could wake and take breakfast and listen to petitions and discuss trade and war and dine and go to bed, all the while listening to the faint screams and moans of her daughters’ slow, agonizing deaths, and then wake to do it all again, knowing that a single word from her would save them and declining to do so.

 

The Sky Platform wasn’t that far from the Main Wing of the Palace. It would have taken two days for Allira’s daughters to die, strapped to the platform so tightly that all they could do was sob and foul themselves and wait for their own bodies to kill them, kidneys overwhelmed by the poison building up in their muscles. No royal blood shed; no offense given to the Ten Heavens. Allira would have heard it all.

 

Allira could have ordered them drowned, or strangled. She didn’t even need to execute them to keep herself and Alfor safe. She could have simply imprisoned them, watched and guarded and forever stripped of their titles and inheritance but passing their days in relative comfort of their own estates. She did not. Her daughters wronged her, they tried to kill her, and she wanted her revenge.

 

If Allura were a better person, she wouldn’t be able to understand how anyone could have possibly done such a thing. Allira would merely be a frightening story, the monstrous Empress to be brought to justice at the edge of the noble hero’s sword. A brutal history long gone to dust, never again to walk upon the earth.

 

But Allura’s not a better person — she’s not even a good person, not really, not instinctually — and in a dim, distant life where Zarkon never rose to power and Allura rose to the throne instead, she knows that she too could have walked past the Sky Platform, listening to her children cry out for her mercy, and simply left them to scream.

 

It’s later than she’d prefer when she comes to the common room to collect Alric for storytime and bed. He’s already in his pajamas when she arrives, the ones printed with tiny roaring Black Lions, and he’s making his dolls dance — or perhaps fight, since the one is now headbutting the other. She sweeps in; Lance looks up from his current knitting project — a warm poncho for Maze, since buttons and clasps have become too difficult for her and raising her arms above her head makes her dizzy — and Alric immediately drops his dolls, running towards Allura and hugging her knees.

 

“Mama!” Alric says, muffled into her gown, and she bends down to pick him up.

 

“Hello, darling,” Allura says, kissing both his cheeks, and he nearly strangles her with the strength of his embrace, pulling painfully on her hair as he hugs her with all his tiny might.

 

“Everything okay?” she mouths to Lance, who nods and makes some incomprehensible gesture and then gives her a double thumbs-up.

 

“He just missed you,” Lance says quietly, and then jerks his head unsubtly to Maze asleep in her pillow-and-heating-pad nest on the opposite couch.

 

“Well, I’m here now,” Allura whispers, hugging her son back. “Here, let’s go back to our rooms and let Maze sleep, I’m sure she’s very tired.”

 

“Slav!” Alric insists, reaching towards the doll he’d abandoned on the floor, and she shifts him to her hip so she can bend down once more and pick it up and hand it to him. She half-expects him to start absently gnawing at it as he used to do not so long ago, but instead he stuffs it between them and clings to her once more.

 

Normally he fusses if he’s carried anywhere too long these days, but he’s content to stay in her arms as they walk back to their rooms, snuffling softly against her hair. Shiro says he’s getting heavy, but to her strength he’s barely anything, the weight of a blaster or a book. As an infant he felt as light as smoke, like any moment he would drift out of her arms.

 

Shiro’s nowhere to be seen when they get to the rooms, but Alric wiggles to get down from her arms so he can run around the room anyway, no doubt looking for him.

 

“Papa?” Alric asks her hopefully.

 

“I’m afraid you get me tonight, Papa’s working,” Allura says. “But you saw him today, that was nice, and you’ll have him tomorrow night.” She sits down on the small mountain of pillows that always seem to migrate from his bed to the floor and he plops down beside her, still clutching the Slav doll.

 

“And what did you do today, my darling?” Allura asks, inviting him to come crawl into her lap and settle drowsily against her chest. “Did you draw with Lance and Maze?”

 

Alric nods.

 

“What did you draw?” Allura prompts.

 

“I drew birds,” Alric informs her. “Lotsa birds.”

 

“I’d love to see them,” Allura says. “Can you show them to me?”

 

“Lance,” Alric explains sleepily, rubbing his face against her chest. “Lance has’m.”

 

“Maybe you and I can draw together tomorrow,” Allura suggests, mentally going through her schedule for the day. She could probably squeeze a varga in between the Votumbek ambassador and the Galactic Sentient Rights Council if she doesn’t let the ambassador blather. “Would you like that?”

 

“Wanna go Koodoos,” Alric informs her.

 

“To see Matt?” Allura asks.

 

Alric shrugs. He’s not particularly interested in his father’s lover — a feeling that appears to be mutual, despite Shiro’s unsubtle attempts to awaken Matt’s as of yet absent parenting instinct — but neither does he dislike him, and he’s happy enough to rampage through Matt’s home, deface Matt’s furniture with crayon, and make Matt talk to every single one of his neighbors, all of which Allura fully approves of.

 

“Wanna see Ees n’ Halid n’ Qorah,” Alric explains. His playmates from Matt’s neighborhood, Allura remembers.

 

“I’m afraid we won’t be going to Quuduzh for another week or two,” she says gently. “We have business that keeps us here. But you can see them then, and perhaps it’ll have stopped raining there and you can all go to the park. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

 

Alric scowls, and Allura fervently hopes that he won’t throw another fit over it.

 

“Wanna go Koodoos _now_ ,” he whines, wriggling in her lap.

 

“Yes, I know. We all want things,” Allura says, smoothing her hand over his head and hugging him a bit tighter despite his wriggling. His hair feels a bit dry; she should check with Lance to see that they’re oiling it properly. “Unfortunately, wanting them doesn’t mean that we get them. Perhaps that’s a good thing. It makes them sweeter when we do.”

 

Alric grumbles, clearly uninterested in the finer points of philosophy. The world is so unfathomably simple to him, a universe apart from the constant card game of politics that she must play every day, and sometimes she catches herself looking for the double meaning in his words, or the subtle insults and intentions in his actions; finds herself thinking of her son as if he’s just another knot to untangle, picking at him until she finds the right places to unravel him to do her bidding.

 

He asks so much of her with his honesty. She must have no secrets before him, this small thing who holds her still-blooded heart in his greedy hands, for he must learn to trust someone in this world, as she learned to trust her father and grandmother, and yet she must have so many secrets so that she can protect him, and she never knows which ones are which.

 

“I love you very much, you know,” she says softly, kissing him on the forehead. “My treasure. My little egglet.”

 

“Wanna go Koodoos,” Alric mutters rebelliously. “Wanna see Ees n’ Halid n’ Qorah n’ Bemy n’ —”

 

“We will,” Allura says hurriedly. “Soon. I promise. But it’s bedtime now. Would you like a story before you fall asleep? Because we _will_ fall asleep tonight, won’t we? Yes, we will.”

 

Alric considers this, then nods decisively and says, “ _Daruma-chan to Tengu-chan_.”

 

“I think I’ll leave that book to Shiro. For the ninth time, if I remember correctly,” Allura says, lifting him up to carry him to the washroom. “Why don’t we go brush your teeth, that’s always interesting, isn’t it?”

 

Alric wants to brush his own teeth these days, so she soaks the tooth-brush in a cup of warm water to soften the bristles while she works the hair oil through his curls and he sits on the counter, kicking his feet, and then she carefully prepares the small tooth-brush with a dollop of tooth-paste like Shiro showed her, letting Alric scrub wildly at his front teeth all by himself before she retrieves the tooth-brush and follows behind him, taking care to spend time brushing his back molars, which is apparently where tiny holes often develop without regular cleanings. She’s content to freshen her breath in the morning with herbal wash, but humans are so fragile, their bodies falling apart without constant care.

 

“All done!” she says brightly. “Toilet and then bed,” and helps him hop off the counter and supervises while he pees mostly in the right direction, half-heartedly washes his hands, and runs to his bed, burrowing his way under the covers. He’s largely stopped trying to sleep in their bed as a proper infant should and he’s never been able to — and even though it’s a good thing that he’s stopped, for Alric is very adept at hiding himself in their blankets and Shiro’s night terrors can sometimes be dangerous even to her, she still feels a small stab of loss every time she has to put him to bed somewhere that isn’t next to her beating heart.

 

“I believe I promised you a story,” Allura says, settling down next to him in his rather small bed and shifting her limbs shorter and thicker to fit better.

 

“ _Daruma-chan to Tengu-chan_ ,” Alric insists.

 

“You’d think after twenty years I’d speak Japanese, but I really, truly don’t,” Allura says dryly. “Besides, that’s your special book with Papa. He’s the only one who can read it to you.” She switches to Middle Altean. “{Would you like me to tell you an Altean story instead?}”

 

“{{Yes!}}” Alric says, bouncing a little. _Lā!_

 

“ _Là,_ ” Allura corrects him gently. “ _Lā_ {is High Altean, not Middle. They’re different, remember? High is the very special way of speaking, and Middle is the normal one.}”

 

Alric frowns, picking at the battered crocheted Slav doll that he still sleeps with.

 

“{Alright, yes, a story. What story shall I tell?}” Allura muses. “{What about Empress Cimora and her hundred magic ships?}”

 

“{Oranna!}” Alric half-yells.

 

“{Oranna the Winged},” Allura says. “{Excellent choice, my heart. Let’s see… Do you remember where we left him last time?}”

 

“{In’a the castle},” Alric says. He’s still confused about that, having never heard of any castle but the ship he calls his home.

 

“{In a castle, yes. That’s as good a place to start as any},” Allura says. “{Up in the air with Oranna. Well, he had been flying for a very long time from his last adventure, and his wings were tired, oh!}” She pretends to collapse and Alric giggles, patting at her arms. “{But there was nothing beneath him but sharp rock everywhere he looked. He flew until he thought his wings would fall off, and just as he felt his shapeshift start failing and his wings begin to shrink, he spied a big castle, high on a hill, and instantly knew it to be Crannolor, home of a beautiful Queen and her six lovely daughters.}”

 

“{Queen like you?}” Alric asks.

 

“{No, darling, I’m a Princess},” Allura explains. “{This was a Queen, famed all through the land for her wealth and beauty and beloved by all her people for her generosity. She had no spouses, although she had many lovers to make her strong children, and she was always kind to guests. Knowing this, Oranna used the last of his strength to fly to the Castle and collapse right before the gates! Oomph.}” She collapses.

 

“{When he awoke, he was in a soft bed in a warm room, and the Queen and four of her six lovely daughters were there. _The great Oranna!_ they exclaimed, heaping him with food and blankets and fine clothing. _Savior of Ilomor and Arelem, storm-chaser, luck-stealer, truth-eater!_ But Oranna was modest as well as handsome, charming, dangerous, clever, and brilliant, so he ate and dressed and thanked them for their kindness, praising their compassion for a poor, lonely, useless traveler such as himself, and assured them that he would quickly be on his way — walking, because he was not yet strong enough to fly again.

 

 _No, you must stay longer until you regain your strength,_ the Queen told him. _Stay and be our honored guest,_  and so he stayed, and that night was the best night’s sleep he had ever gotten. In the morning, he rose and went down to breakfast, but still there were only four of her lovely daughters there.

 

 _But Your Majesty,_ Oranna said. _I heard that you had six daughters, all as smart and charming and lovely as yourself, and yet I’ve met only four. Where are the eldest two?_

 

 _They’ve gone to visit their fathers,_  the Queen explained, and Oranna thought nothing more of it. The Queen lavished him with food and drink and clever conversation, and with every word and glance, he felt himself start to fall in love with her, and he didn’t even remember her daughters’ absence until the next week, when he noticed only three daughters came down from their rooms to breakfast.

 

 _Your Majesty, where is your fourth daughter?_ Oranna asked. _Is she sick?_

 

 _No, she is well,_ the Queen explained. _She’s gone to visit her father._

 

And Oranna thought it was a little odd for the fourth daughter to depart before her sisters had returned from their own journeys, but the other daughters did not act as though anything were strange, so he said nothing at breakfast, and he said nothing when the Queen retired to her tower that day, the tower that no one but her ever seemed to enter. The next day, he and the Queen went hunting and he was even able to fly a little. He caught a songbird for her to eat at dinner, plucking it right out of the air as she laughed in delight.

 

A month they passed like this, falling deeper and deeper into a great love, and Oranna knew that he would never love anyone as much as he did this Queen who had cared for him so tenderly. One night, the Queen found him in his guest chambers, and before he could confess his love, she took his hand.

 

 _Stay with me,_ she begged him, _and make me many more lovely daughters._

 

 _You wish me to be your husband?_ Oranna asked.

 

 _Be my consort,_ the Queen said, _for you are the highest in my heart._

 

And he agreed, and all rejoiced, and preparations for the ceremony were begun — but the Queen slipped away from him to spend the night in her tower instead, and that morning, only two of her lovely daughters came down to breakfast.

 

 _Where is your third daughter?_ Oranna asked.

 

 _She has gone to visit her father,_ the Queen replied.

 

 _But Your Majesty, don’t you wish all of your daughters to witness us?_ Oranna asked, and he was very, very confused.}” Allura frowns comically, and Alric giggles.

 

“{The Queen smiled wistfully and said, _I have very little control over them. They do as they wish. Perhaps they will be here to witness us, and perhaps they will not,_ and Oranna took her hand and kissed her gently, but although the Queen spent all the days with him, she again would not join him in the night, retiring to her tower instead.

 

Preparations for the ceremony consumed the castle, and Oranna woke the day before the binding to find the Queen absent and only the youngest daughter down for breakfast.

 

 _But where is your sister?_ Oranna asked, very frustrated. _Has she gone to visit her father too? Will no one witness us?_

 

 _My sister did not go to visit her father. She went to the tower,_ the last daughter said. _As will I._  And although her words sent a chill down Oranna’s back — brrr!}” Allura says, hugging herself and rubbing her arms, “{the last daughter did not seem afraid. She was as fierce as a hunting bird, and she was smiling.

 

The day of the binding, no daughters came down to breakfast.

 

 _She has gone to visit her father,_ the Queen said sadly — but now Oranna Truth-Eater was hungry for more than food, and when the Queen went away after breakfast to dress for the ceremony, Oranna crept over to her tower. The door was biometrically locked to her signature, he found, but he hid himself behind the tower’s shadow, and the Queen had taken such care of him that he was strong enough to fly up to the distant balcony at the top and enter through the unlocked door there. He stepped into the highest room of the tower, and he found— What do you think he found?}” Allura asks Alric.

 

Alric considers this. “…Gold!”

 

“{Close, but not quite},” Allura says. “{BONES. Piles and piles of bones, all gnawed clean and sucked dry of their marrow. As he stood there, wondering why the Queen kept all the leftover bones from the kitchen locked up here in a tower only she could access, he saw something shining underneath the nearest pile. When he picked it up, it was the youngest daughter’s silver arm-band.

 

And standing amongst the bones with the arm-band in his hand, his heart broke as he realized that the beautiful Queen he loved was no Queen at all, but a _monster}_ ,” she says, gasping dramatically, and Alric squeaks and wiggles in terrified delight, “{and her children hadn’t gone to visit their fathers; she had eaten them all. Chomp!}” Allura snaps her teeth in Alric’s direction and he shrieks and laughs. “{Left nothing of them but bones.

 

Just as he stood there, he heard a shifting in the bones behind him, and when he turned, it was the Queen in her fine wedding clothes.

 

 _You are no Queen,_ Oranna Truth-Eater said. _I now know you for what you are — you are a Morregor, the most evil of monsters._

 

 _I am a Morregor, but I am no monster,_ she said. _But Oranna, how did you know? We look just like you._

 

 _I know you for a Morregor because they are the most evil of monsters, and only the most evil of monsters would eat her own children,_ he said, and then with a mighty rush of wind, he opened his wings and ran at her and shot up into the sky with her in his arms!}” Allura throws her arms wide. “Whoosh!”

 

“Whoosh!” Alric says grandly, throwing his own arms wide too.

 

“{She fought like a lion, clawing at him, but she was no match for his strength. They climbed higher and higher in the sky, until the castle was merely a speck beneath them, and all the while, she was trying to find his price},” Allura says. “{ _Let me go,_ she said, _and I will give you gold and jewels._

 

 _I will not take them,_ he said, _for you are evil._

 

 _Let me go,_ she said, _and I will give you lands and ships._

 

 _I will not take them,_ he said, _for you are evil._

 

 _Let me go,_ she said, _and I will give you a kingdom._

 

 _I will not have it,_ he said, _for you are evil._

 

 _Let me go,_ she said, _and I will give you the truth._

 

 _Give me the truth,_ he said, _and I promise that I will let you go._

 

 _I must feed,_ she told him. _No other food will sustain Morregors except others of our kind. If I am weak and let my daughters live, they will eat me instead. I must do this thing, but it is not evil. It is my nature. That is the truth._

 

 _But you must have had a mother yourself,_ he says. _So why did you survive?_

 

 _Yes,_  she said. _I had a mother. She was weak. She let me live, so I ate her._

 

 _Then you did not give me the truth, for your mother knew what she would do was evil, and what you have done to your children was not your nature,_ he said. _It was your choice._

 

And then he opened his arms and let her fall.} SPLAT!”

 

“SPLAT!” Alric yells, smacking his hands together.

 

“Exactly,” Allura tells him. “She died very messily.” She blows a raspberry, and Alric laughs, then yawns. “And Oranna went on to have many more adventures, which I will save for another night, because it’s time for sleep.”

 

“Check,” Alric orders her.

 

“Of course I’ll check for monsters,” Allura says. She gets up from the bed and makes a big show of peering in his blankets, in the closet, behind the chair and toy hamper. “Oh! No monsters here! No Morregors!”

 

“Check!” Alric says, pointing at her and Shiro’s bed.

 

“Of course, silly me, I forgot,” Allura says, and peeks under the pillows and blankets of her own bed. “No monsters here either, I’m afraid. Just a tired mother who needs to sleep, and her very sleepy little boy.”

 

“D’you have wings like Oranna?” Alric asks.

 

“No,” Allura says, coming back to sit on his bed again so she can cuddle him until he falls asleep. “I don’t have enough mass. That’s what made Oranna so special. He was very dense.”

 

“What’s dense?” Alric asks as he lays down on top of her, kneeing her in the ribs as he wiggles around to get comfortable.

 

“How much of me there is in me,” Allura says. Alric frowns. “Hunk will explain it to you tomorrow.”

 

“D’I have wings?” Alric asks, yawning into her collarbone.

 

“We don’t know yet,” Allura says gently. “And we won’t know for a long time, so don’t go jumping off furniture to find out.”

 

Alric mumbles something that isn’t _I promise not to jump off furniture,_ and she makes a note to tell Shiro to watch for flying Alrics.

 

“I just want you to be safe, darling,” Allura says, motioning the bedchamber lights to dim to darkness as Alric begins to drift off, eyelids fluttering. “Trying to grow wings when you can’t even shift a fingernail yet is not safe. Just fly in your dreams for now.”

 

Alric yawns into her chest, and she pulls the blankets up around them both, safe and warm and pressed together, like they’re one flesh once more.

 

“I love you, egglet,” Allura tells him, as she does every night that she gets to spend with him.

 

“Love you, mama,” Alric mumbles. “Shhhhh. ‘M sleeping now.”

 

She kisses his forehead and holds him tight to her — and for just a moment, the universe steps to the left and she looks down and sees her son as her people would have, as she would have, in another life: this mongrel thing, made all the worse for how much he resembles his trueblood mother but for his human father’s dark eyes and misshapen ears and fleeting, insignificant life. A stain on her reputation and a poison in their pristine genetic pool.

 

Shiro would have never been her consort, of course, had Altea survived and he had somehow found his way to her nonetheless. He wouldn’t even have been a low-ranking concubine. He’d have been the sort of servant whose job was to serve her in bed, his species making him a curiosity for the Court and the subject of tittering rumors whispered behind closed doors — the barbarian roundear that the Crown Princess was sampling even as she ignored those of suitable rank. She hopes he would have been a guest at Court rather than a captive in all but name, but she doubts it would have made much of a difference to her all those years ago; all she would have cared about was that he was beautiful and interesting and that she wanted him to belong to her.

 

Perhaps they would have found a way to each other’s hearts anyway, at least enough for her to lose her senses and procreate with this roundear bedservant. Perhaps she would have just been lonely and bored by every simpering fool around her, as she was before Altea fell. Her father would have been merciful — found some way to conceal her incubation period and sent Alric to be raised by some commoner at the edge of the Empire where no one would recognize a child so resembling the Crown Princess. Had it happened while her grandmother was still alive, Allira would have simply drowned Alric and threw his corpse to her pet carrion birds, and then invented something far, far worse for Shiro, who was not royal, whose blood could be shed and the Ten Heavens would still smile.

 

 _But why does it matter if he loves her?_ Allura had asked her grandmother during their afternoon arram, the first time she understood what Grandmother meant when she snapped at Father over his “unnatural behavior” towards Allura’s mother. _He still does his duty._

 

 _Greatness is in our nature,_ Allira had explained as she carefully served her granddaughter the biggest slice of fruits-cake. She always sent the servants away for afternoon arram; it was hers and her beloved Allura’s alone. _For the good of the Empire, for the good of all, we must protect it, honor it, be true to it, for it is what makes all of this_ — waving her hand at the palace gardens around them — _possible. It is what keeps our people safe. And what your father does… It’s play-pretend for the sake of fashion. It is not in his nature. That is not who we are._

 

“{I will kill anyone who tries to harm you},” Allura whispers to her sleeping son, so many years and a lifetime later. “{I promise you, they will die begging for mercy, and I will never give it to them. You are my heart, my blood, my flesh. You’re mine. My little egglet. And no matter what, I will never harm you.}”

 

She holds him for a long time, watching his small chest rise and fall and his little legs kick as pushes off the ground in his dreams, soaring through endless bright skies. After a while, Shiro comes shuffling into the room, trying to be quiet even though he bangs his shins on two separate pieces of furniture and steps on one of Alric’s dolls.

 

“You can turn on the little light,” Allura whispers, and Shiro jumps, clearly not having seen the faint glow of her eyes and markings in the dark bedroom. At least Alric isn’t dark-blind like his father. She idly wonders why Haggar didn’t fix that too.

 

Shiro turns on the little light by their bed that he leaves on for sleep, and Allura gently untangles herself from Alric, tucking the covers back around him before padding away towards the wardrobe and then to go join Shiro in the bathroom where they can talk away from small ears all too keen to wake up. Shiro’s brushing his teeth when she eases the door open and slips inside, her blue jewelry case in hand.

 

“Did he go down okay?” Shiro asks, mouth full of foamy tooth-paste.

 

Allura nods, her hand falling so that the blue jewelry case is mostly hidden by her skirt. “He was tired, so he fell asleep fairly quickly. I told him an Oranna story.”

 

“Oh, good,” Shiro says, relieved. “Those are comparatively non-violent.”

 

“It was The Queen and Her Six Lovely Daughters,” Allura adds.

 

“Oh,” Shiro says in an entirely different tone. “Cannibalism. Great.”

 

“You have peculiarly delicate sensibilities, and it’s a good story,” Allura argues. “Although I did change the ending a bit.”

 

“No cannibalism?” Shiro asks hopefully.

 

“No,” Allura says. “Just some of the dialogue.”

 

“If he has nightmares, you get to wake up to deal with them,” Shiro warns her.

 

“I will,” Allura promises. She waits until Shiro has spit out the last of the tooth-paste and rinsed out his mouth and then leans over to kiss him gently, hand cupping his cheek. This tooth-paste makes his mouth taste biting and bitter, although Shiro insists that it tastes sweet, and yet still she lingers before she breaks the kiss and holds out the blue jewelry case with the collar inside.

 

“Shiro, would you mind terribly if… Would you wear this for me tonight?” Allura blurts out. “Not for any bed games, not like this morning, just… wearing it.”

 

Shiro grins at her. “Sure.”

 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Allura tells him.

 

“I want to,” Shiro says.

 

“And you shouldn’t feel the need to simply humor me either,” Allura continues. “I’d rather you be honest than kind.”

 

“Allura,” Shiro says meaningfully. “I want to.”

 

He bares his throat to her, and after a moment of hesitation, she takes the collar from the jewelry case and fastens it around his neck, the closed fist clasp coming together with a click.

 

“Not too tight?” Allura asks.

 

“No, my neck changed sizes since this morning,” Shiro says dryly.

 

“I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” Allura says.

 

Shiro takes her hand and kisses the fingers that just claimed him. “I’m not. I’m very comfortable. Thank you, Allura. My partner,” he adds meaningfully.

 

“Thank _you_ ,” Allura says softly, reaching out to stroke his cheek and then gently touch the soft leather of the collar. “My partner.”

 

They stare at each other a moment, then they both laugh, and Shiro starts scrubbing off his eyeliner as Allura rummages around in the cabinets, looking for her favorite silk headscarf. She hopes that Alric didn’t steal it again to use as a cape, or worse, a canvas. “Well, my partner, how did you fare today?”

 

“Not good, my partner,” Shiro says. “The Preetapzi know we’re gaming them until the winter, and they’re not going to wait. I don’t think there’s any stopping civil war in Shon Mir at this point. A really ugly one.”

 

“It’s not your fault,” Allura says.

 

“I could have done more,” Shiro says.

 

“You really couldn’t have, darling,” Allura says. “Sometimes things are just inevitable, no matter how hard we try to change their course, and Shon Mir has been on this course for centuries.”

 

Shiro sighs, and she shifts bigger and taller so that she can lean over and hug him all the better, ignoring the water dripping onto her from his freshly-washed face.

 

“Did you know that Shon Mir was once an Altean territory?” Allura asks him. “It was conquered under my great-great-grandparent, I believe. They executed the last Preet king on the field of battle. Very fierce people, the Preet — completely wiped out the native Caothex population. And then the whole thing was lost under Father. Well, let go of.”

 

Shiro nods. “I saw some of the ruins while I was there.”

 

“I hope they’re still there after the war,” Allura says. “I’d love to tour them sometime.”

 

“Great photo op,” Shiro says wryly, and she untangles herself from him so she can bop him playfully on the nose.

 

“I don’t do everything for political reasons, you know,” Allura says.

 

“I know,” Shiro says fondly. “You chose me, after all.”

 

“Shiro, really. Don’t pretend you’re a bad political choice. We’re an excellent photo op,” Allura says archly, but Shiro frowns a little at the truth in her words, his body going small and sad, and she curses herself for her carelessness.

 

She takes his face in her hands, looking into the kind eyes that might not even be his, at least not originally. Haggar changed and replaced so much of Shiro’s body, and yet changed so little of his soul. “Shiro. My beautiful partner. That was a joke. I was barely thinking of politics when I fell in love with you.”

 

“For anyone else, that would sound pretty bad,” Shiro says.

 

“You know better, though,” Allura says, and Shiro nods, turning his head so his smile is pressed against her palms.

 

“Did you talk to Coran?” Shiro asks.

 

“About…?” Allura asks.

 

“The almost-roleplay,” Shiro says.

 

“The one I told you that I absolutely wouldn’t talk to him about?” Allura asks.

 

“Yeah, that one,” Shiro says.

 

“I did talk to him about it,” Allura admits as Shiro grins in tired triumph. “Not explicitly, but… yes. We talked. It was helpful.”

 

“So you’ll stop beating yourself up about it?” Shiro asks.

 

“I was never beating myself up,” Allura sniffs, rummaging through the drawer of their cosmetics. “I merely had concerns. Reasonable ones.”

 

“That you’ll rape me in my sleep?” Shiro asks dryly.

 

“I want Alric to be proud of his name,” Allura says, pulling the headscarf out of the drawer of bath toys, for some reason. “Him and this hypothetical sibling of his. They are Al’Tens and they should think that’s a good thing. Historically, it has been very great, but not at all good.” She sighs. “I’m not good, Shiro. I hope you know that by now.”

 

“I know,” Shiro says gently. “I’ve known for a long time.”

 

“In a thousand other lifetimes, I was the one you would have fought against, not Zarkon,” Allura says softly, and she’s said it ten thousand times, but never quite so brazenly. “You would have hated me.”

 

“I know,” Shiro says again. “Empress Allura, destroyer of worlds.”

 

“And Crown Princess Allura, spoilt brat,” Allura admits. “You would have hated me had you met me back then, too, although probably for different reasons.”

 

“Would you have hated me?” Shiro asks.

 

“I don’t know,” Allura says. “But I do know that I would have taken you to my bed.”

 

“Lucky for me that I met the right Allura at the right time, then,” Shiro says.

 

“Yes, you are very lucky to have me,” Allura says archly, and Shiro laughs and leans back against the counter, watching her tie up her hair.

 

“So, Shon Mir is a trash fire, the Mnenmus is rebuilding pretty well, actually — remind me to tell Matt about their new shield technology, there’s a lot of lasers involved — and the N1 quadrant is still having bad cereal harvests but the supply lines we built are holding against assaults,” Shiro recites, looking up at the ceiling as if his daily tasks list is painted up there. “Is there anything else we needed to touch base on?”

 

“Chimsan is about to have their annual elections and the opposition party requested neutral observers,” Allura remembers, “so we need to work out a peaceful means of assuring that the neutral observers don’t get politely escorted off the planet again. I know it’s been at the bottom of our task list, but we really should work on assembling some neutral arbitrator amongst the Alliance. Wartime governance can only last so long before things start blowing up at home, and I believe we reached ‘so long’ quite some time ago.”

 

“A galactic United Nations?” Shiro asks.

 

“I don’t know what that is but it sounds volatile and either an empire or not the least bit united,” Allura says.

 

“It’s not an empire, and you’re right — it’s volatile, disunited, and toothless, but the UN doesn’t have Voltron,” Shiro says, “and we can probably do better if we learn from their mistakes.” He sighs. “Although it’s not like we want to create a nationless military power, either.”

 

“We already are a nationless military power, darling,” Allura reminds him.

 

“Yeah, but I don’t like to think about that,” Shiro says.

 

“Power requires humility and arrogance both,” Allura says. “And although you don’t like it, we are powerful.”

 

“I like it the less and less I think about it,” Shiro says, and Haggar designed him to be youthful long past his prime, but for a moment, he looks very old.

 

“To have immense power is a terrible burden,” Allura says, “but I’m growing to appreciate that having no power is rather worse.” Shiro nods knowingly. “So we’ll do what we can and hope that it works and try not to lose perspective along the way. And at least neither of us is doing this alone.”

 

“No, we aren’t,” Shiro says, smiling at her, then scowls. “And there was something else I meant to tell you, but I don’t remember what it was. It’s in the notes on my datapad.”

 

“Shall I go fetch it?” Allura asks.

 

“If you’re very, very quiet,” Shiro says. “I love Alric so much, but he always wants a story when he wakes up and I really don’t want to read _Daruma-chan to Tengu-chan_ again.”

 

“I think you’ll find yourself disappointed, then, because he was very insistent on it tonight, and it’s your turn to do storytime tomorrow,” Allura says.

 

“Oh. Great,” Shiro says. He snorts in amusement. “Look at us. So burdened with terrible power that we’re hiding in the bathroom from a child.”

 

“I think that’s entirely reasonable,” Allura says. “After all, children are very scary creatures. Worse than clowns.”

 

“Three-year-olds especially,” Shiro says. “Did you know he tried to throw his shoes out of the bus window the last time we visited Matt?”

 

“I blame you,” Allura says. “If you were Altean, he’d still be an infant.”

 

“If he was full Altean, he’d still be awake and screaming,” Shiro retorts.

 

“Yet another thing we have to look forward to,” Allura says. “Terrible sex, no sleep, diapers, screaming, and chapped nipples. And we need to hire a nurse.”

 

“I really don’t want to,” Shiro says grumpily.

 

“I don’t either,” Allura says. “Not at all. I want him all for myself, every single moment of every single day, but I can’t have that and it’s not fair to promise him that. Besides, Maze will probably need a live-in dedicated carer soon too, if not this year then the next. One way or another, we’ll have to get used to letting a few people in.”

 

“So, we’re creating a galactic U.N. and finding a nanny,” Shiro says.

 

“Of the two, I think finding this ‘nanny’ will be far more difficult,” Allura says wryly. “Is that the sort of thing I can make Taz do, do you think?”

 

“I think you could make Taz do anything,” Shiro says. “Are we sure we want to do this? The kid, not Taz. Or the UN, I guess.”

 

“No, definitely not,” Allura says. “But we weren’t entirely sure last time either, and I don’t regret having Alric, not at all, not even the parts that have been very difficult indeed. We’ll need some time to get things in order, though. Do you think a year is long enough?”

 

“I think so, if we’re proactive,” Shiro says. “So, eleven month incubation… I guess that means we need to start pretty soon.”

 

“I suppose we’d better have all the good sex now, then, before we have to start _procreating,_ ” Allura says with distaste. “And you’re sure you don’t wish to simply collect your liquid and investigate…” She casts around for a word that isn’t _surgery_ or worse, _modification._ “A change?”

 

“It’s called sperm, not _liquid,_ and I’m sure,” Shiro says. “But if you’re feeling bad for me, you can break the news to Alric that he’s going to have to share us.”

 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, darling,” Allura says, reeling him in to kiss him and perhaps even have a bit of that good sex now before Alric inevitably wakes up to pee or get water or from a nightmare and then makes Shiro read him his favorite book while she acts out the story for him with his dolls. “We’re not sure that this will work. Alric might have been one in a million.”

 

“Maybe,” Shiro says, grinning down at her, collar comfortable around his throat, so beautiful and interesting and freely hers. “But I’m feeling optimistic.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a throwaway line in Atlas about Shiro and Allura’s Fun Kinky Times with Ovipositors, and became… this. In terms of timeline, the events of this fic fall somewhere in between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 of Atlas.
> 
> Kink CNs: D/s; consent play (enthusiastic inability to consent); pregnancy kink; royalty roleplay that involves some potentially uncomfortable gender and power undertones and seriously dubcon elements; resistance play discussed, although not acted upon.
> 
> General CWs: Past intrafamilial political violence that includes filicide and attempted parricide and fratricide; discussions about a system of socially-sanctioned marital rape; slightly graphic description of an execution method; species supremacist world-views and related slurs; mentions of graphic violence towards children, including infanticide; a creepy fairytale involving cannibalism and harm towards teenagers; moments of body horror related to nonconsensual medical body modification; very mild genital dysphoria because of agender identity; a character having sexual relationships in the past with partners who could have been motivated by politics and social pressure rather than sexual desire and attraction.
> 
> In case you’re wondering, [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torc#/media/File:Gold_torque_2.jpg) is the kind of torc Allura talks about.


End file.
